Jay Gatsby and J. Alfred Prufrock are two modern literary leads who would probably never be caught dead in the same room together. Although both turn-of-the-century men are in love with completely unattainable women, their attitudes toward life, the universe, and everything couldn’t be more opposite. Gatsby amasses a fortune, buys a mansion, throws lavish parties and completely reinvents himself, taking the extravagant approach of the peacock to woo his bride. Prufrock, on the other hand, reluctantly initiates a meeting, hesitates, broods, withdraws, and ultimately resigns himself to a life of isolation, taking a less daring approach to courtship. Yes, ladies, sometimes these are his choices.

Although Jay and J. Alfred seem to live in worlds apart, chronologically speaking, they are only a decade apart. In fact, both characters are pioneers of a cultural period that was myopically dubbed “modernism” on the off chance that nothing would ever change again. With boom cities, huge crowds, division of labor, and division of wealth suddenly becoming commonplace, people experienced a sense of isolation, disunity, and anonymity unprecedented in the new cultural landscape. On some level, Gatsby and Prufrock’s troubled romances represent a larger struggle to find their place in early 20th-century city life, which is strongly reflected in the way they are told.

Jimmy Gatz’s humble upbringing in North Dakota does nothing to prepare him for the extravagant 1920s city life that his childhood sweetheart, Daisy, so enjoys. His “Gatsby” persona is essentially an elaborate and extended performance for his benefit and that of society, so it stands to reason that we should be forced to take the audience position by the fact that The Great Gatsby is narrated in the third person. . In the style of a game of “telephone” (telegram?), Gatsby is first introduced to us by an outsider, who originally learns of Gatsby through gossip, which people have picked up from friends of friends who may well have heard about it. . a passing trolleybus.

Although the rumors work in Gatsby’s favor for a while, it doesn’t take long for the posh New Yorkers who attend his parties to realize he’s not one of their own. Gradually, the narrator discovers the truth of Gatsby’s story: Jay is an uneducated small-town bootlegger bent on retrieving the (now married) girl of his dreams. Highly damaging personal secrets aside, however, we end up with very little idea of ​​what’s going on in Jay’s head, just that most of the Gatsby partygoers have no sense/appreciation for the nice guy. what it really is Playing the role of a wealthy social elite, the real Gatsby becomes as inaccessible to big-city society as it is to him. Looks like not much has changed since the days of your brother’s tree fort clubhouse.

In a major departure from the Gatsby, we get the feeling that Prufrock was born and raised in his rigid, bourgeois society, and that nothing could be more stifling. Although he longs more than anything to share his feelings with a mysterious, nameless woman, he feels paralyzed by social convention and ultimately decides not to tell her at all. The first-person narration of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is completely inseparable from Prufrock’s innermost thoughts and feelings, leaving us with almost no objective sense of the things around him. In fact, scholars still disagree on whether the poem is about a romantic interlude gone awry or an imagined scenario whose imagined failure leads Prufrock to keep his mouth shut.

By placing an impenetrable barrier between the reader and the poem’s external reality, Prufrock compels us to share his sense of detachment from the outside world, which consists of formality, routine, triviality, and lots and lots of tea. Looking through Prufrock’s eyes is like looking through prison bars: almost everything he describes is segmented into parts, whether it’s “faces you meet,” “hands of the days,” “eyes you meet.” set”, “[a]arms with bracelets,” “long fingers,” “nerves in patterns,” or even the interrupted back-and-forth structure of the narrative itself. This temperamental “pair of claws” wrestles with how to convey his sentiments to a callous culture, and definitely it shows in the dismembered bodies surrounding him.Prufrock is Gatsby’s manic depressive, though perhaps the two could bond over a pint, a good cry, and the fact that neither of them gets the girl.