Part I of Little Gidding particularly spoke to me about the unexpectedness of life. Eliot seems to be saying that no matter what you do or no matter how much you plan things will always go awry. Nothing is ever what you expect it to be. This passage specifically also gave me vague recollections of Yeats' Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and how Prufrock said, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons". I am terrible at expressing my thoughts so I can't say just why this passage brings Prufrock to mind but the best I can say is that it rings a bell with loneliness and perhaps the prodigal son when Eliot refers to the Pigsty and then the redundancy of planning one's life out even though you know it's going to get messed up somehow.
"If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
and turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
and the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
is only a shell, a husk of meaning,
from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
if at all. Either you had no purpose
or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
and is altered in fulfilment."
- T. S. Eliot
I commented on Daniel Stephens'
This passage also intrigued me, but I couldn't quite figure out why. Perhaps it is the words Eliot uses here: broken, rough, dull, shell, and husk. All of these words do invoke a sense of emptiness or loneliness. Also, Prufrock was written by Eliot too, so I can definitely see what you're saying about a connection there.
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