After reading and discussing the two works in class, I
realized there were a few connections between Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and T.S. Eliot’s “The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which is only fitting due to the fact that Eliot
is one of Anderson’s modernist contemporaries.
The first connection is a similarity—structurally, both
works are set up in divided sections that each highlight a unique idea or
theme. Furthermore, with each work, a story is being communicated between a
speaker and a listener. In Winesburg,
Ohio, George Williard is the overall listener of all the town’s stories. In
“Prufrock”, the beginning part of the poem from the Inferno suggests that the following poem is a retelling of a story
to some unknown listener. On a technical level, every story requires some sort
of audience to make it known, but the fact that both of these works have
established that there is definitely a listener imbibing it all proposes that
the ideas in these stories are worth taking note of.
One of those ideas is the motif of the lack of
communication. Both Prufrock and the grotesque characters in Winesburg unmistakably
struggle with communicating with others—Prufrock with his irresolution in
deciding whether to travel up the stairs and actually talk to his ‘love’, and grotesques
like Wing Biddlebaum and Enoch Robinson with the inability to convey their
messages as desired. In my Winesburg,
Ohio analysis paper, I suggested Anderson expressed in his novel that an
open exchange was a necessity in order for a working communication to ensue.
This idea can also be said to be present in “Prufrock”—Prufrock never really
establishes a communication since it seems that he never does begin to talk to
his ‘love’ before the poem ends.
Isolation is another connection between both of these works.
All of the grotesque characters in Winesburg,
Ohio seem to have a sort of seclusion, so in a way, Prufrock is also
grotesque because he also feels alone and has trouble in societal settings like
many of the people in Winesburg do.
Both stories also discuss age, and what it means to be young
and old. However, Winesburg, Ohio and “Prufrock” (and by extension, Anderson
and Eliot) seem to differ in their opinions over this. While Winesburg, Ohio is
a coming-of-age story for George Williard and seems to associate youth with
frivolity and naiveté and maturity with sophistication and wisdom, “Prufrock”
seems to look fondly on youth because someone who is younger has more “time yet
for a hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions” than
someone who is older. Prufrock wants to keep his youth despite knowing it is
impossible while George Williard’s maturity is celebrated throughout the town.
