The change of ideals A study of sample poems of T.S. Eliot s Early and later poetry

The subject of the present paper is the change of ideals in Eliot’s poetry. By the word ― ideal‖, the researcher means the identity of modern man which Eliot perceives at different periods of development in the poet’s literary career. The researcher would like to add to this meaning the imagery Eliot uses to denote that identity. ―Ideal‖ may mistakenly be understood to be the optimum feature or fit image that the poet wishes for his characters and situations . The meaning of the word can be better understood in relation to the sample poems chosen for this paper against which other poems of similar periods can be studied. Reading carefully Eliot’s early poems will immediately yield the idea that the ideals imaged in those poems are not chosen solely by the poet to describe his society and its inhabitants. Rather, Eliot just exposes—not imposes—those ideals, adopted by his society, and criticizes them bitterly as his contemporary poets do. Eliot seeks out those ideals and finds them abiding in defeatism, withdrawal, irresponsibility, down to earth…etc . While the case is as such for that early poetry, Eliot’s later poetry brings a new different idea about modern man’s inevitable identity. This time, it is Eliot who chooses the ideals to be identified by his society. He finds those ideals always abiding in the lost—but not unapproachable—realm of moral and spiritual values. The paper, therefore, falls into three sections:Section One whose title is derived from The Waste Land studies ― The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock‖( 1917) to stand as a representative poem of Eliot’s early poetry. The Waste Land (1922) and The Hollow Men ( 1925) are excluded here for questions related to space and time. Here the reader will meet defeatist characters and anti-heroic situations. This, of course, has been due to the surrounding milieu ruled by war, bloodshed and economic and political setbacks which are unveiled between the lines of The Waste Land-- the manifesto of that period of sheer degradation and dissolution.Section Two whose title is taken from a phrase mentioned by Eliot in Four Quartets ( 1942) sheds light upon the four poems making up the version of Four Quartets. These poems are Burnt Norton( 1935), East Coker( 1942), The Dry Salvages ( 1941) and Little Gidding ( 1942). Four Quartets represents a daring return to spirituality and human fullness as elements for identifying man as a master being worth . Instead of the strategy of rebuke and disgust, Eliot adopts the strategy of a responsible poet guiding his fellow men towards light, or into ― the rose garden‖ of Four Quartets.