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-C- ‫أمامة رياض جبار‬

1-Comment on the importance of animal imagery in "Prufrock"

Animal imagery is all too frequent in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”, we have plenty of it. whatever form it appears in his poetry it does
usually have the same pattern of association, The crab imagery in “Prufrock” or the
imagery of parrot, ape and bear in “Portrait” illustrate the superciality and
weakness of its protagonist representative of society as a whole, and serve as a
warning to any potential male readers of Eliot to not make a Prufrock of
themselves.

Rather than build meaning, Eliot sets out to utilize animal imagery to take real
meaning away. Over the course of the poem, the narrator, J. Alfred Prufrock,
struggles to tell the reader his overwhelming question. He instead diverts attention
to images or ideas that are ultimately meaningless as when he remarks he..

should have been a pair of ragged claws

scuttling across the floors of silent seas

These lines has no real meaning and does not connect to anything going on in the
rest of it. Ragged claws suggest a crustacean creature, which is significant for
Prufrock’s character as these creatures are built around self-defense and keeping
their sensitive being hidden away through a hard exterior. Prufrock afraid to reveal
anything that could be taken as not as grand as he wants to be, so he keeps it
inside of his shell. The thought of him wanting to be a crab may be random, but the
image of a crab is important to convey the isolation and alienation that is felt by
Prufrock.
2-Speak about the symbolic vision of the sphinx in "The Second Coming"

As soon as Yeats introduces the idea of a Second Coming as salvation, he uses his
most powerful symbol -- the Sphinx -- to offer his prediction of the future of the
world and of humanity. The Sphinx represents the power and influence of
Christianity, the symbol here is of the end of a religion that, for Yeats, embodied
hope and innocence. Its power is gone, and the hour of the "rough beast" -- the
Sphinx, an allusion to pre-Christian religion -- has come around again.

We remain unsure what kind of creature is arriving. What is clear is that something
is coming, that it is demanded by the times, that its arrival will change everything,
and that it will appear amid disorder and destruction. About to be born is an
incarnation of ruin.

3-The Theme of old age in "Sailing to Byzantium

W.B. Yeats faces old age with the wish to forget his decaying body and educate his
soul for immortality. In Sailing to Byzantium he makes it clear that the world of
senses is not a fit place for an old man. He must withdraw himself into the world of
the intellect and the spirit. In this world young men and women are found in close
embrace, birds in trees, singing out of the excitement of the mating season. Thus
fish, flesh and fowl are all caught in the sensual urge of the generation which is
only a process ending in death.

The oId man has no place amidst this "sensual music". When a man no longer has
the capacity for physical enjoyment. He becomes as worthless and helpless as a
scarecrow. He is a contemptible figure unless he devoted himself to the study and
enjoyment of art. The young generations can spare no thought for those
masterpieces of art which are the products of ageless intellect. Since Byzantium is
the traditional home of art, the poet in his old age has decided his voyage to
Byzantium-a journey from the sensual to the spiritual world to devote himself to
the study of its treasures.
Thus, in "Sailing to Byzantium," old age is the force and the threat that has
impelled the poet to leave behind the temptations of exuberant physicality and the
pride of the body, to attempt to seek eternal life in some divine and abstract
pattern. Old age has robbed him of his illusions, and sent him on a desperate quest
to go "out of nature" in search of eternal truths and eternal life.

4-The contrast between the world of the listeners and the Traveller in " The
Listeners"

A technique De La Mere employs masterfully to keep us off-balance is the liberal

use of juxtapositions.“The listeners” poem divides the two different worlds, the
world of the living (the traveler) and the world of the dead (the phantoms). It
offers insights into the fact that every human being is a traveller in the world.
Existence itself is a journey from birth to death. It is both mysterious and familiar,
strange and common. The door separating the traveller from the phantom listeners
symbolizes the barrier between life and death, the secular and define, the body
and spirit.

5-How does the victim speak about his past life before the war in " Strange
Meeting"

The dead man as a victim of war talks about the horror of war and the inability for
anyone but those involved to grasp the essential truth of the experience. He
suggests that hell is a safer place of refuge for combatants than the battle-ravaged
mortal world, because the former place is at least free from the rivers of blood in
the battlefields. He mourns at being compelled to die early, instead of being able to
live full life, to love and feel, and more importantly, to inspire others with hope and
ideals. His own sorrow has been generated by his experience of “the pity of war”.
Though the dead soldier has realized this truth, he cannot communicate this to
other men as he is no longer alive. So some soldiers continue to count the
supposed gains of victory, while others prepare to retaliate.