Rhapsody on a Windy Night Analysis

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Analysis of ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ by T.S. Eliot ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ demonstrates the protagonist’s alienation from society by using complex imagery to evoke a response from the audience. It is a typical Eliot poem, portraying the hopelessness of society, and how it slowly degrading to be empty, desolate. There is a’ crowd of twisted things’, including a broken spring (symbol of resilience), of which the persona recalls that “rust clings to the form that the strength has left.” This particular line creates a lasting image of a society sapped of moral and physical energy. The persona of the poem is walking, alone on a street and neglected from society. He has no purpose. He is deliberately putting off going home, because home is as empty and lonely as the world in which he has been walking. Eliot uses the persona as a representation of the isolation and alienation of the human situation. The use of personification, “the street lamp sputtered, muttered” reiterates the idea of his loneliness and that he is an estrangement towards society. The protagonist is just a wondering soul, crossing the roads of hollowness, because to him his home is lonesome and empty. The wonderer lives in a hollow place where a single “toothbrush hangs on the wall.” The toothbrush reiterates that he lives alone and isolated. The persona of this poem can be compared to Prufrock in ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’. As Prufrock does, the persona compares his life to everyday items. He is deserted on the streets, and a lonely aura radiates, through his eyes, the world is tormented with loneliness, which slowly decays and eventually, communication dies from this world. The persona escapes into his memories whilst on a walk and is similar to the escape of Prufrock makes. His imaginative journey on the midnight walk, alone is his dream and that his mind is confused and
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