J. Alfred Prufrock

My interpretation of J. Alfred Prufrock is that the character is just getting back into the dating game. Whether he is a widower, newly divorced, or just gave up for a while and has finally decided to try to start dating again is never divulged. However the character finds himself going to a bar. The entirety of the story shows the man being nervous. He worries that he will have anything in common with the ladies, who the odds are good will be younger. That he will be able to even converse with them, due to the fact that they are probably interested in things he is not, such as the artist Michelangelo. His nervous fears get stronger as he gets closer. His fears manifesting with low self esteem to bash himself. Fearing people would laugh at his physical appearances such as his bald spot. In an attempt to ease his nerves the man visualizes what it would be like to have a woman in his life, ultimately deciding to continue on with his planned evening.

Sylvia Townsend Warner- King Duffus

In King Duffus Warner takes the tale of the Scottish king and adds her own perspective to the way it ends. Having been sick, almost to the point of death for nearly a year, it could be expected for any man to give up hope to be better. The description of Duffus during his sickness tells of him suffering of an unquenchable thirst (parching), maintaining a fever (scorching), of which probably left him bed ridden to the point of developing painful sores on his body (roaring). The king expects, and even wishes for death. The night they awake him to tell him that those who had supposedly cursed him were dead, and that he should grow to be better, the king can only be sad. His despair had grown into full delusions of being in Heaven. He had expected to die, expected to join Christ, longed for it even. Only to be left King in a sad little throne on a sad little hill. Realizing this he weeps.

H.D.-The Pool

In Hilda Doolittle’s The Pool, the narrator has found a creature in a tide pool that, to the narrator at least, was unknown to exist. The meat of this single stanza poem is derived of child like wonder and curiosity. The reader is able to almost remember this wonder, as they too curiously ponder on what this creature is that the youthful narrator is inspecting. Like all curious children, the narrator pokes the creature with a stick. Of course the only way to tell if you can agitate a creature is by poking it with a stick. Elated that the creature is both alive, and able to move the child captures the creature in a net, still quizzical as to what the creature is. There is no description of the creature other than referring to it as “bandied one” and referring to its agitated physical response to being poked as “quivering like a fish”.