Jay Gatsby and J. Alfred Prufrock are two modern literary protagonists who would probably never be caught dead in the same room together. Though both turn-of-the-century men are in love with completely unattainable women, their attitudes toward life, the universe, and everything couldn’t be more opposite. Gatsby amasses a fortune, buys a mansion, throws lavish parties and completely reinvents himself, taking the flamboyant peacock approach to wooing his girlfriend. Prufrock, on the other hand, reluctantly initiates a meeting, hesitates, broods, retreats, and finally resigns himself to a life of seclusion, taking a less daring approach to courtship. Yes, ladies, sometimes these are his options.
Although Jay and J. Alfred seem to live in separate worlds, chronologically speaking, only a decade separates them. In fact, both characters are pioneers of a cultural period that was short-sightedly dubbed “modernism” on the off chance that nothing would change again. With booming cities, large crowds, the division of labor, and the division of wealth suddenly becoming commonplace, people experienced a sense of isolation, disunity, and anonymity unprecedented in the new cultural landscape. On some level, Gatsby and Prufrock’s troubled romances represent a larger struggle to find their place in early 20th century city life, which is strongly reflected in the way they are narrated.
Jimmy Gatz’s humble upbringing in North Dakota does nothing to prepare him for the extravagant 1920s city life so enjoyed by his childhood sweetheart, Daisy. His character in “Gatsby” is essentially an elaborate and extended performance for his benefit and that of society, so it stands to reason that we are forced to take the position of the audience by the fact that The Great Gatsby is narrated in the third person. . In the style of a game of “telephone” (telegram?), Gatsby is first introduced to us by an outsider, who originally learns about Gatsby through gossip, which people have picked up from friends of friends who might as well have heard him. . a passing trolleybus.
Though the rumor mill works in Gatsby’s favor for a while, it doesn’t take long for the fashionable New Yorkers who come to his parties to smell that he’s not one of their own. Gradually, the narrator discovers the truth of Gatsby’s story: Jay is an uneducated bootlegger from a small town hell-bent on winning back the girl of his (now married) dreams. Highly damaging personal secrets aside, though, we end up with very little sense of what’s going on in Jay’s head, just that most of the Gatsby partygoers have no sense/appreciation for the good guy. what it really is. Playing the part of a wealthy social elite, the real Gatsby becomes as inaccessible to big-city society as he is to himself. Looks like not much has changed since your brother’s tree fort clubhouse days.
In a major departure from Gatsby, we get the sense that Prufrock was born and raised in his rigid bourgeois society, and that nothing could be more suffocating. Although he longs more than anything to share his feelings with a mysterious nameless woman, he finds himself paralyzed by social conventions and ultimately decides not to say anything to her at all. The first-person narration of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is completely inseparable from Prufrock’s innermost thoughts and feelings, leaving us with almost no objective sense of the things around him. In fact, scholars still disagree on whether the poem is about a romantic interlude gone wrong or about an imagined scenario whose imagined failure leads Prufrock to keep his mouth shut.
By placing an impenetrable barrier between the reader and the external reality of the poem, Prufrock forces us to share his sense of separation from the outside world, which consists of formality, routine, triviality, and lots and lots of tea. Looking through Prufrock’s eyes is like looking through prison bars: virtually everything he describes is segmented into parts, be they “faces you meet,” “hands of days,” “eyes that meet you.” set”, “[a]arms with bracelets,” “long fingers,” “nerves in patterns,” or even the interrupted back-and-forth structure of the narrative itself. This temperamental “pair of claws” struggles with how to convey his feelings to a callous culture, and definitely it shows in the dismembered bodies around him.Prufrock is Gatsby’s manic depressive, though maybe the two could be tied together with a pint, a good cry, and the fact that neither of them gets the girl.