I have pondered on T. S. Eliot’s poem this weekend trying to grasp the meaning of it. After research and rereads I have concluded that Elliot is is expressing time and how we spend most of it doing the same thing and then before we know it, it is gone. We get into ruts in our life that we, as Eliot puts it, “have measured out [our] life with coffee spoons.” Our lives get into deep routines of doing the same thing everyday that we let time slip past and then we are only left with the dreams of what could have been.
This is the stage Eliot is in because he begins to ask “would it have been worth it,” as he looks back on all the chances he passed up on. As he sits in regret he begins fantasizing of all the things that could have been and if they would have been worth going for. At the end he accepts that he is in a routine of imaging the “could have beens” and concludes with “till human voices wake us, and we drown.” Suggesting that in the end, it is always too late to change and we drown.
P.S. I commented on Brannen's
I like your point on how "we are only left with dreams of what could have been." I find it interesting that Prufrock day dreams about different outcomes but seems too indecisive to actually choose one.
ReplyDeleteThe reference to coffee spoons was my favorite line in the whole poem because as a college student I have become addicted to coffee and have a routine of making coffee at a certain time everyday. I loved your take on this, we must always ask is it worth it in the end? or will it be worth it?
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