The short fiction readings are grouped according to narrative style with ancillary poetry readings chosen for either their narrative style or thematic relation to the stories. For each story or poem you read, please consider the following broad questions as a framework for your close reading. The individual guide questions provided for each story or poem will direct you to examine its more specific aspects.

• Why has the author chosen a particular narrative point of view?
  
• Why does the point of view suit the subject of the work?
  
• How can the reader differentiate between the narrator’s purpose and the author’s purpose?
  
• What role does irony play in each work?
  
• What literary elements and devices does the author use and to what effect?

1. Who is the narrator in this story? How do you know? What affect does this knowledge have on the reading of the story?
   
   
2. What is the setting of the story? What details allow you to infer the time period in which the story takes place?
   
   
3. How does the narrator manipulate the narrative point of view? What effect does this have?
   
   
4. What do the diction and syntax used throughout the story reveal about the narrator? Provide examples to support your response.
   
   
5. What seems to be the narrator’s attitude towards the situation she’s in? Support your response with examples from the story. Pay close attention to passages that reveal tone and mood.
   
   
6. Provide examples of the narrator’s use of irony in describing her conversation with the man on the left. How does the narrator’s speech regarding the man on the left change after she spots the one on the right?
   
   
7. Identify and explain the significance of the allusions the narrator makes in paragraphs 1, 5, 6, 11 and 13. Can you make any distinction among these allusions with regard to how they are used?
   
   
8. What is significant about the use of italics and ellipses in the last paragraph of the story?
   
   
9. What main theme does this story set forth? Explain.

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1. What is the narrator’s primary attitude towards people? Describe the incidents that reveal this attitude.
   
   
2. What is the narrator’s perception of himself? Explain. How might the narrator’s perception of himself differ from the reader’s perception of him? Ultimately, how does the narrator compare to the people he describes? How do diction and syntax promote these discrepancies? What role does irony play?
   
   
3. What is the Ezmo incident, and how does this incident intensify the reader’s awareness of the narrator’s approach to people?
   
   
4. What is the only thing the narrator trusts? Why?
   
   
5. Note the structure of the story. Explain how the structure helps the reader understand the character of the narrator.
   
   
6. What does the title mean; that is, what is its relationship to the story?
   
   
7. What are the narrator’s outstanding characteristics? How might these characteristics affect his perception of the events he relates in the story?

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To prepare for group work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," please complete the following:

• Read the poem carefully. Consult the resource sites below. Please make notes on your hard copy of the poem.
• Answer the study questions.

Resources

• The Prufrock Papers...a hypertext resource for "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with audio...listen, enjoy and learn!
• Annotations for "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"...comprehensive list with line numbers
• a second Annotations for "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"...not as comprehensive as the first site, but a bit easier to read
• "Prufrock, J. Alfred Prufrock"...article from the Atlantic's poetry pages discusses the narrative style of the poem
• “To His Coy Mistress”...you will need to read this Andrew Marvell poem to answer question 9.

Study Questions

(prepared by Dr. Tina L. Hanlon, Associate Professor of English, Ferrum College, VA
http://www.ferrum.edu/thanlon/studyq/tseliot.htm)

1. Many of Eliot’s poems do not contain traditional stanza structures and rhyme schemes. The images seem fragmented, or disjointed. Look carefully for patterns created by rhymes, other sounds, repetitions, and characteristics that the strange sequences of images may have in common.
   
   
2. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” may be understood as a stream of consciousness passing through the mind of Prufrock. The “you and I” of line 1 may be different aspects of his personality. Or perhaps the “you and I” is parallel to Guido who speaks the epigraph and Dante to whom he tells the story that resulted in his damnation—hence, “you” is the reader and “I” is Prufrock. In either case the poem is an inner monologue. Eliot himself said the “you” was an unidentified male companion (which would make the poem a dramatic monologue), but most readers think of it as Prufrock's public self, which can be differentiated from the sensitive, thinking inward “I.” The poem is disjointed because it proceeds by psychological rather than logical stages. Which interpretation of the “you” and “I” seems most helpful to you?
   
   
3. Apparently, Prufrock is on his way to a tea and is pondering his relationship with a certain woman. What does he seem to be hesitating about in this relationship? What reactions does he expect to encounter from women?
   
   
4. To what social class does Prufrock belong? How does Prufrock respond to the attitudes and values of his class? Does he change in the course of the poem?
   
   
5. What else can you tell about Prufrock as a person and about his view of himself? What does his full name suggest about him? What is he afraid of? What makes his life trivial or meaningless?
   
   
6. Prufrock uses two seemingly opposite strategies in his monologue: the trivializing of what is important (“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”) and absurd overstatements (“Do I dare/Disturb the universe?”). How does this fact help define his personality?
   
   
7. How is description, especially of the cityscape, used in “Prufrock”? What unusual images are used to depict the streets?
   
   
8. Eliot often uses “expressionist” imagery, in which objects are projections of psychological states. The image of the evening as an etherized patient is an example. Find others in these poems.
   
   
9. Line 92 of “Prufrock” provides an allusion to Marvell's seventeenth-century poem “To His Coy Mistress” (ll. 41-42). What connections are there between the two poems regarding the themes of love and time?
   
   
10. In l. 82 Prufrock compares himself to the beheaded John the Baptist. Is he ridiculing himself or the Bible? What is the effect of the Biblical allusions in the poem?
    
    
11. Is Prufrock an emotional freak or does he embody problems many of us have?
    
    
12. What might the song of the mermaids (l. 124) signify, and why does Prufrock think they will not sing to him (l. 125)? What do the other references to heroic or historical figures reveal about Prufrock's view of himself?
    
    
13. Consider the last line of “Prufrock.” Does this mean that we unfortunately have to settle for real women instead of sex-fantasy mermaids, or can the line be read more positively?
    
    
14. What types of images show that people are dehumanized in modern life, and suggest that inanimate objects are alive?
    
    
15. How do Eliot's innovations in the uses of images, language, and poetic form help convey his views on modern society?