How Do Eliot and Yeats Write About Hardship

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How do Eliot and Yeats write about hardship? Introduction- Eliot’s poetry explores themes of hardship, despair and sorrow. Poems such as ‘Journey of the Magi’ and ‘Prufrock’ present the unease that comes with hardship, yet the type of hardship experienced by the narrators of each poem contrast significantly. Yeats has a more Romantic approach to hardship, somewhat embracing it as a challenge that leads to discovering your true inner vitality. This is particularly evident in his poems; ‘A Prayer for Old Age’ and ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. 1) Journey of the Magi- Struggle on their journey to Bethlehem. Weather (natural hardship) ‘a cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year’ (social hardship) ‘cities hostile and the towns unfriendly’ Lake Isle of Innisfree- similar uneasy reaction to city life, possible alienation as Yeats moved from urban to rural location during his life, repetition of ‘go now, and go’ suggests a ready approach to escape his hardship of ‘pavements grey’. Journey of the Magi presents a depressive state in which the magi feel helpless and hopeless at what their religion is becoming, in contrast to Yeat’s acceptance of his disliking of city life, helping him to understand his own true desire to surround himself with nature and ‘cricket sing[ing]’. 2) Prufrock- different type of hardship - inner hardship and lack of inner acceptance leading to a daily hardship and neurosis in his own life. ‘when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall’ –this vivid description of suffering expresses the daily hardship that Prufrock feels, through his anxiety of how the world views him. Metaphor for a butterfly/ insect pinned in a glass case to be helplessly studied and judged. A Prayer for Old Age- The reader would assume that the narrator’s journey towards death would bring with it a sense of enervation and depression, yet for the narrator
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