NCDPI – AIG Instructional Resource: Background Information

Resource Title: Analyzing Structure in T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Subject Area/Grade Level (s): English III / Time Frame: 1 class period
Common Core/Essential Standard Addressed:
RL.11.3 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
RL.11.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
Speaking and Listening Standards
SL.11.1 Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Standards for Language
L.11.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
Additional Standards Addressed: NA
Brief Description of Lesson/Task/Activity: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an excellent example of many of the concepts the poets were addressing at the turn of the twentieth century. Poets were experimenting with poetic form and responding to the destruction that consumed the Lost Generation. In particular, Eliot incorporates the spirit of the Moderns through his stream of consciousness form and the allusions found in Prufrock’s interior monologue.
Type of Differentiation for AIGs (include all that apply): Enrichment x Extension Acceleration
Adaptations for AIGs: x Content x Process x Product
Explanation of How Resource is Appropriate for AIGs: This poem’s effort to capture the inner thoughts of Prufrock makes it particularly difficult for average readers to follow. To comprehend and analyze the content of the stanzas and how the stanzas are interrelated requires strong language skills to find the connections in the poems discursive structure.
Needed Resources/Materials:
·  The full text of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Sources: NA
TEACHER NOTES: NA

NCDPI AIG Curriculum Resource Outline

STAGE ONE: ENGAGE
Explain/review the concepts of stream of consciousness as a literary technique as well as modern poetic characteristics such as a lack or traditional forms and quick, awkward changes in content and even inserts of other languages.
Many readers are able to gather that the speaker of the poem is at a social gathering by the end of the first two stanzas, but some may need to know that to begin.
STAGE TWO: ELABORATE
To guide the readers through the first part of the reading, some questions may be helpful such as:
·  In stanza 1, Prufrock doesn’t address a specific person in his proposition. What words or lines help you infer his intentions by the end of the stanza?
·  Why do you feel he “leads [us] to an overwhelming question” line 10 only to find the thought of vocalizing it a bit repulsive or “overwhelming?”
·  What does Prufrock see in stanza 2?
·  How do stanzas 1 and 2 work together to create Prufrock’s experience?
·  What is the relationship between the “yellow fog” and Prufrock’s condition?
·  What are some symbolic intentions of the color yellow? Do they apply in this instance?
·  Stanza 4 presents the process of what usually happens to Prufrock at these gatherings. What words in his summary begin to establish the tone, and, possibly, the outcome of the evening?
·  Why repeat “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michaelangelo” (lines 35 and 36) between the process mentioned in the previous question and how he feels the women analyze his physical attributes?
·  Why do you think the unfinished idea of “lonely men in shirt-sleeves” (line 72) lead to his statement of being a crab?
·  What significant event happens between lines 80-86?
·  What is different about Prufrock’s monologue after line 86?
·  Throughout the interior monologue Prufrock alludes to Lazarus, John the Baptist, Hamlet, crabs, and mermaids. What role do these allusions play in Prufrock’s condition?
·  What do you thinks is Eliot’s intent to switch pronouns from “I” to “We” in line 129?
STAGE THREE: EVALUATE
Two questions to check for thoughtful analysis are:
·  How does Eliot use poetic form to establish Prufrock’s condition/situation?
·  What do you feel is the most significant aspect of Eliot’s structure?
·  Now that you’ve finished analyzing the poem, why do you think Eliot used “Love Song” in the title?
Possible thoughtful answers might include the stress Prufrock has imposed upon himself, the isolation of growing older in this social structure, or the efforts to create introductions to the women that he doesn’t even bother to finish.
Out of class extension: A quick survey of media will reveal no shortage of personas who, like Prufrock, mentally paralyze themselves to the extent that they can’t act upon their wishes. Your assignment is to explore how contemporary society presents these fears in a contemporary context. Choose one of the following:
Option I: Find an example of a character in a song, film, music video or other form of media and bring it to class. It will become an entry to a gallery walk. Along with the example include a written explanation of why the example you chose is a good representative of Prufrock in the 21st century. Your response must explain how the persona in your submission is like Prufrock and why the response of the persona is a credible representation of a contemporary character frozen by the inability to act and that the end is anticlimactic to the desire of the persona.
Option II: Create an ad, song, skit, comic strip, multimedia journal or a short film that takes the theme of Eliot’s poem and places it in a contemporary context. While it would be easy just to place a person at a modern party who never asks someone to dance, a rich submission would also spend significant time developing an appropriate way to incorporate a contemporary counterpart to the stream of consciousness techniques of Eliot. You will also need to submit a written portion along with your creation that: identifies what aspects of Eliot’s work you wanted to capture in your work; and how your creation is a worthy continuance of Eliot’s poem.
After students share, students should explore how language, narrative and images can shape a theme in different ways.
TEACHER NOTES:
Two possible enrichments to this lesson involve multimedia:
·  Thanks to the internet, students can find dramatic readings of this poem including one by the poet himself. These readings lend themselves to a fruitful exploration of Reading Standard 7.
·  Also, the shift from stanza 1 to stanza 2 can be difficult to students. Viewing the transition from the “Dawn of Man” in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) might help students see how two disparate ideas can be connected. The shape of the spinning bone connects with the similarly shaped space station just like the imagined propositions connect with the passing women at the social gathering.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NORTH CAROLINA State Board of Education | Department of Public Instruction AIG ~ IRP Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project