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EXERCISE 1 - Syntax and Image (pairs)

Extract 1:

"And indeed there will be time / For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, / Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; / And indeed there will be time / To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?' / Time to turn back and descend the stair / And time yet for a hundred indecisions / And for a hundred visions and revisions."

Extract 2:

"Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, / Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? / But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, / Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, / I am no prophet — and here's no great matter."

  1. Identify the dominant syntactic structure in each extract — paratactic or hypotactic. Justify your answer by pointing to specific grammatical features: conjunctions, subordinate clauses, sentence structure.

  2. Extract 1 contains a central image. Identify it, name the figure of speech involved (simile, metaphor, or other), and describe the distance between the two terms being compared. What does that distance contribute to the meaning?

  3. Extract 2 also contains a striking image. Do the same: identify it, name the figure of speech, and describe the distance between the terms. How does the syntactic structure of the extract — the hypotaxis — reinforce or complicate what the image is doing?

  4. Compare the two extracts: how do the different syntactic choices produce different emotional effects? What does parataxis do to Prufrock that hypotaxis does differently?

EXERCISE 2 - Diction, Lineation, and Figure (pairs)

Read the following extract carefully:

"I grow old... I grow old... / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. / Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? / I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me."

  1. Look at the diction of this extract. Identify at least two words or phrases that belong to a low or deliberately prosaic register. Why would Eliot choose this level of diction at this moment in the poem? What effect does it create against the image of the mermaids in the final lines?

  2. "The bottoms of my trousers rolled" is a synecdoche — a part standing for a whole. What whole does this part represent? What does reducing Prufrock to this detail do to our sense of him as a character?

  3. Look at the lineation of "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me." Describe precisely what the line break between these two lines does. What is the effect of suspending "each to each" before the next line arrives? Connect your answer to what Wolosky says about enjambment in the Leda analysis.

  4. "I grow old... I grow old..." is a repeated phrase with no syntactic development — it goes nowhere. Is this parataxis? How does this moment connect to what Eliot does syntactically throughout the poem? And how does it connect to what we saw in "Do Not Go Gentle" (repetition as a syntactic and emotional choice)?