Comparison Between Preludes and American Beauty

T.S Eliot’s Preludes and American Beauty are different texts, shaped by their composer’s contextual values that portray the two themes isolation and the search for meaning. Although both texts are composed during different periods of time, they both encompass many of the techniques and styles which reflect upon their context to portray similar themes. This is evident in a comparative study of the two texts.

T.S Eliot’s represents the isolation of an individual from society in ‘Preludes’ through his reflection of underlying contextual concerns.
The general depiction of the cityscape in the modernist period is viewed as ugly, dirty and as a place of physical and spiritual poverty. Human society is meaningless and trivial and people are pretentious and not concerned with deep connections of others.
This isolation is conveyed through the imagery “That are raising dingy shades”. T.S Eliot utilises this technique to convey to the reader the notion that nobody ever visits the scene, hence emphasising isolation.
In the lines “in a thousand furnished rooms” and “the thousand sordid images”, repetition of the word “thousand” is used by T.S Eliot. He represents the scene of the poem as a great, wide and well-equipped landscape, yet the word “sordid” conveys the scene as abandoned.   Consequently, Eliot alludes to the loss of individuality.
This also reflects upon Eliot’s contextual values of disconnection in society.
From the poem, personification is used in the lines “the winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways” by T.S Eliot. There, he makes non-living unimportant objects the focus of his sentence by giving the “winter evening” human characteristics. “Winter evening” also describes the scene as cold and lifeless which ultimately relates to the isolation of the individual.
From Eliot’s ‘Preludes’, it is evident that he is reflecting the inherent contextual concerns of his time.

Similarly, Sam Mendes also explores this notion of the...