| Jay Gatsby and J. Alfred Prufrock are two | | | | uncovers the truth of Gatsby's history: Jay is a |
| modern literary protagonists who'd probably never | | | | small-town, uneducated bootlegger hell-bent on |
| be caught dead in the same room together. | | | | winning back the (now-married) girl of his dreams. |
| Although both turn-of-the-century men are in love | | | | Highly damaging personal secrets aside, we |
| with utterly unattainable women, their attitudes | | | | nevertheless end up with very little sense of |
| toward life, the universe, and everything couldn't | | | | what's going on in Jay's head, just most of |
| be more opposite. Gatsby amasses a fortune, | | | | Gatsby's party-goers have no sense of / |
| buys a mansion, throws lavish parties, and | | | | appreciation for the good guy he really is. By |
| completely reinvents himself, taking the | | | | playing the part of a wealthy social elite, the true |
| flamboyant peacock approach to wooing his | | | | Gatsby becomes just as inaccessible to big-city |
| ladyfriend. Prufrock, on the other hand, reluctantly | | | | society as it is to him. Looks like not much has |
| initiates a meeting, hesitates, broods, retreats, and | | | | changed since the days of your brother's |
| ultimately resigns himself to a life of isolation, | | | | tree-fort clubhouse. |
| taking more of a unabomber approach to | | | | In a vast departure from Gatsby, we get the |
| courtship. Yes, ladies - sometimes these are your | | | | sense that Prufrock was born and bred into his |
| choices. | | | | rigid bourgeois society - and that nothing could be |
| Although Jay and J. Alfred seem to live worlds | | | | more stifling. Although he longs more than |
| apart, chronologically speaking, they are only | | | | anything to share his feelings with a mysterious |
| separated by about a decade. In fact, both | | | | unnamed woman, he feels crippled by social |
| characters are pioneers of a cultural period that | | | | convention, ultimately deciding to tell her nothing |
| was shortsightedly dubbed "modernism" on the | | | | at all. The first-person narration of "The Love |
| off chance that nothing would ever change again. | | | | Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is completely |
| With booming cities, huge crowds, division of labor, | | | | inseparable from Prufrock's innermost thoughts |
| and division of wealth suddenly becoming | | | | and feelings, leaving us with almost no objective |
| commonplace, people experienced an | | | | sense of the things around him. In fact, scholars |
| unprecedented sense of isolation, disjointedness, | | | | still don't agree on whether the poem is about a |
| and anonymity in the new cultural landscape. On | | | | romantic interlude gone wrong or an imagined |
| some level, Gatsby's and Prufrock's troubled | | | | scenario whose imagined failure prompts Prufrock |
| romances represent a larger struggle to find their | | | | to keep his mouth shut. |
| place in early twentieth-century city life, which is | | | | By placing an impenetrable barrier between the |
| strongly reflected in the way they're each | | | | reader and the external reality of the poem, |
| narrated. | | | | Prufrock forces us to share his sense of |
| Jimmy Gatz's humble North Dakota upbringing | | | | separation from the outside world, which consists |
| does nothing to prepare him for the extravagant | | | | of formality, routine, triviality, and lots and lots of |
| 1920's city life that his childhood sweetheart, | | | | tea. Looking out through Prufrock's eyes is like |
| Daisy, so relishes. His "Gatsby" persona is | | | | looking through the bars of a jail: virtually |
| essentially an elaborate, extended performance | | | | everything he describes is segmented into parts, |
| for her and society's benefit, so it's only fitting | | | | whether they be "faces that you meet," "hands |
| that we're forced into the position of audience by | | | | of days," "eyes that fix you," "[a]rms that are |
| the fact that The Great Gatsby is narrated in the | | | | braceleted," "long fingers," "nerves in patterns," or |
| third person. In the style of a game of | | | | even the interrupted back-and-forth s tructure of |
| "telephone" (telegram?), we are first introduced to | | | | the narrative itself. This moody "pair of claws" is |
| Gatsby by an outsider, who originally hears about | | | | torn over how to convey his feelings to an |
| Gatsby through gossip, which people have picked | | | | unfeeling culture, and it definitely shows in the |
| up from friends of friends that might as well have | | | | dismembered bodies that surround him. Prufrock |
| overheard it from a passing trolley. | | | | is the depressive to Gatsby's manic - though |
| Although hearsay works in Gatsby's favor for a | | | | perhaps the two could bond over a pint, a good |
| while, it doesn't take long for the posh New | | | | cry, and the fact that neither of them ever gets |
| Yorkers who crash his parties to smell that he's | | | | the girl. |
| not one of their own. Gradually, the narrator | | | | |