Poems’ Analysis Essays Example

“In Memoriam A.H.H.”, a poem by the British poet Lord Alfred Tennyson, is a requiem for his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It touches upon many significant aspects of Victorian society. In that time there appeared a serious conflict between science and religion caused by Darwin’s theory. His scientific suppositions that people evolved from apes struck many people in their faith. Moreover, the Victorian era is marked by a rapid growth of industry (facories, mills, etc.) which made many people greedy and more materialistic. Their moving away from religion closer to capitalism only enlarged the gap and increased the conflict. This problem is vividly expressed in Tennyson’s poem. He faces and experiences this doubt in faith after the death of his friend.
Nature plays an important role in the poem, first as a part of Victorian doubts described in the previous paragraph and secondly, as the aim of Tennyson’s lament. He is depressed because he considers nature to care only for the biological continuation of species, instead of caring for each individual, unlike God, who is believed to take care of everyone. Thus God and Nature appear to be in a struggle with each other.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. Eliot shares many characteristic features of modernism. First of all, it is questioning oneself – i.e., the problem of self-orientation and identity. But unlike works of Romantic genre, modernist poems focus on more universal issues, and so the narrator of the poem faces the questions of existence. He asks universal and objective questions, not personal ones. Secondly, the sense of alienation is closely connected to modernism and also reflected in the poem. The main character is a passive observer, even though he has had much experience in the society, we understand that he is outside it now and only watches the world passing by. Thirdly, the setting of the poem is another evidence of modernism – urban setting and nature are used to convey the narrator’s feelings. We can see both yellow fog lingering in the city streets and nature in the narrator’s imagination. Finally, the structure of the poem is fragmentary and symbolical; it reflects the chaos of life. We encounter many allusions and symbols while reading the poem.
It is really hard to identify who the poem is addressed to. Somebody believes that Prufrock talks to his potential lover, somebody states that he is addressing the reading, but most researchers agree that this is an internal monologue with himself.