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T.S. Eliot Exemplar Essay - Module B HSC English Advanced

The following essay was written by Fenna Kroon, Project's English Resourcer!

Fenna Kroon

94 in English Advanced

English Advanced Module B Exemplar Essay - T.S. Eliot

Module b essay question.

“When you engage with works of quality you often feel, and continue to feel, that your internal planes have shifted, and that things will never quite be the same again.”

To what extent does this statement resonate with your considered perspective of TS Eliot’s poetry？

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HSC English Exemplar Essay Response

Good literature has the power to take us as readers on a journey with the author. This is evident in TS Eliot’s modernist suit of poetry TS Eliot: Selected Poetry, particularly ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ (Love Song) (1915) as well as ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925). These texts and their use of literary devices provide readers with a glimpse into another perspective from a time long gone. As a result, our own views and internal planes are challenged and altered. This change is permanent, exposing readers to ideas beyond their own. Thus, these poems have shaped the views of countless individuals and will continue to do so to a large extent.

When confronted with literature that is challenging and engaging, the individual has no option but to ponder its central messages. In ‘Love Song’, Eliot establishes this through prolific use of the Flanuer, connoisseur of the streets and a lonely, observing wanderer. Created within a context of mass urbanisation and mechanisation, this figure walks through new streets and society that is continually changing. Personally, this poem was finished shortly after the death of Eliot’s close friend, Jean Verdenel in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 and hence this poem encapsulates the futility of conflict as well as modern society. This is evident in the opening lines as the flaneur says “Let us go then you and I / as the evening is spread out against the sky / like a patient etherised on a table.” This stark and confronting juxtaposition mirrors that of the title where ‘love song’, with musical and romantic connotations, is juxtaposed with ‘J Alfred Prufrock’ as a proper noun. This consequently results in readers immediately feeling uncomfortable as their expectations for what to expect within traditional poetry are crushed. Exacerbated through repetition as he writes “There will be time, there will be time.”, Eliot comments on how his society has made him passive, procrastinating the search for meaning with temporary satisfactions. He further comments on British high society, questioning whether “Should I, after tea and cake and ices, have the strength to force this moment to its crisis?”. Here, Eliot and the flaneur are begging themselves to find the strength to create their own meaning in society. Thus, they reach out to the audience to change their ways，acting as a cautionary tale for the ambivalence the two experience. Finally, this is exemplified as Eliot writes “I have seen moments of my greatness flicker” and the visual connotation of achievements as flickering like a candle indicate how Eliot believes that a modernist society inhibits individuals from being their own person and finding meaning. As John Xiros Cooper so effectively summarised, “[modernist society] make us passively abject.” This highlights how Eliot’s context minimised his ability to find peace and understanding. Within a world of upheaval, the individual becomes lost. Reading this as a contemporary audience, it is impossible to ignore our own suffocating society of change. Consequently, this poem allows for readers to understand the futility of their attempts of finding the meaning of life and existence. This ultimately shifts their internal understanding irrevocably and unchangingly.

Further, the futility of life and religion leave readers with no guidance or advice in finding continuity. This is evident in Eliot’s The Hollow Men, which uses an extended metaphor of the river Styx (the purgatorial border between life and death) and intertextual references to establish the meaningless nature of a life without faith. After suffering a nervous breakdown and institutionalisation in 1921, this poem is a manifestation of this desolation and pain. Evident as he writes “This is the dead land. This is the cactus land.” the allusion to Dante’s Divine Comedies, a text discussing hell and purgatory, it becomes evident that the setting of the poem is one of indecision and judgement. This is further established through the epigraph alluding to Guy Fawkes, “A penny for the old guy”and to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as he writes “Mistah Kurtz - he dead”. Both these allusions discuss legacy and how you’re remembered once you die. Fawke’s death is celebrated by children to this day, with Mr Kurtz repenting on his deathbed, begging “What have I done?”. Consequently, Eliot’s inclusion of these two epigraphs at the beginning of his poem create lingering questions of what death means and what an unsatisfying life means. Hence, as he writes “We are the Hollow men. We are the stuffed men.”, the inclusive language of ‘we’ draws all readers into the discussion of whether they’ve lived a worthy life. Eliot links this to religious pursuits as he writes “Lips that should kiss / form prayers to broken stone”. This alludes to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, comparing their romance to the paradoxical nature of religion. Providing both a mechanism for damnation in Hell as well as eternal salvation，Eliot questions whether a religious life would in any form change his circumstance. Xiros Cooper effectively expands on this, arguing that “We are not surprised when it ends with a defeated stammer”. Essentially, Eliot’s consistent allusions to other texts and metaphors to being ‘hollow’ create a questioning persona surrounding life and religion and its influence on judgement. Consequently, readers are forced to go on this journey with Eliot as they engage with this poem, considering their own answers relating to life, death and purgatory. And, once these questions are in your head, they are impossible to get out.

Having considered Eliot’s suite as a whole，it is evident that his poetry impacts readers on a fundamental level because it discusses issues pertinent to everyone. This is particularly true for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Hollow Men, discussing the dangers of a changing society and purgatory itself respectively. As a result, the reader’s understanding of themselves and their broader society is fundamentally and permanently altered.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Hamlet and His Problems

Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Hamlet and His Problems

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 4, 2020 • ( 0 )

Eliot first published the essay Hamlet and His Problems in Athenaeum on September 26, 1919, and subsequently the piece was collected in The Sacred Wood in 1920.

In the essay, Eliot was ostensibly reviewing two recent books on William Shakespeare’s play, one by an American scholar, Elmer Edgar Stoll, the other by an English scholar, J. M. Robertson. He singled both of them out for praise because, in their treatment of Hamlet, he felt that they had shifted their critical attention away from the more typical focus on Hamlet’s character and instead toward the play itself. Maintaining that same shift in focus in his own commentary, Eliot, in the course of his review, deliberates on what he sees to be Hamlet’ s failure as drama, and in the course of that part of his discussion he coins the term objective correlative , one of the two critical phrases for which he became perhaps as much renowned as he did for his poetry (the other would be dissociation of sensibility) .

The coinage came about as Eliot was attempting to define the precise nature of what is lacking from Hamlet that makes it, in his view, less successful as poetic drama than it could have been. Essentially, the play, Eliot suggests, is filled with “stuff” that Shakespeare as both playwright and poet was unable to “drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art.” This, according to Eliot, is a failing not necessarily in the material itself but in Shakespeare’s handling of it.

Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent

Readers of Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), for example, a piece virtually contemporaneous with his essay on Hamlet, will already know how important for Eliot were matters of craft and technique, those dispassionate structures and linguistic strategies whereby the poet transforms experience, be it real or invented and imaginary, into the work of art. As Eliot would have it, this transformative process overrides any other considerations. Indeed, for him, craft and technique should be the foremost constituents of the poetic process if poetry is ultimately to be accepted as an impersonal act of communicating the complexities of reality.

Having defined Hamlet’s “problems” as a failure on Shakespeare’s part to manage his poetic material as effectively as he could have, Eliot then offers what, in his view, ought to have been the solution to these problems, had Shakespeare only employed it. It is in that context that Eliot introduces the phrase “objective correlative” into his argument. For an emotion to be “immediately evoked” in a work of literature, Eliot contends, there must be “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” that constitute “that particular emotion,” such that when that formulation is presented, it will result for the reader or viewer in a sensory experience evoking the desired emotion. “The artistic ‘inevitability’ lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet. ”

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

The core idea that Eliot is expressing in “Hamlet and His Problems” seems indisputable once grasped. Essentially, all that he is saying is that a work of art affects the perceiver in many ways and on many levels—emotionally, sensuously, morally, ethically, socially, aesthetically, viscerally. The list goes on. The point is that the work of art succeeds best that combines the right elements into an “objective correlative” to elicit the broadest range of responses that the artist is aiming to provoke in the perceiver. According to the implications of Eliot’s theory, it can be argued that Shakespeare could have gotten more clarity out of the various components of a drama that has always impressed even its most ardent admirers with its murkiness had he, Shakespeare, succeeded in finding and then casting just the right objective correlative to exemplify the emotional and moral complexities of Hamlet’s dilemma. For example, Hamlet’s preexisting hatred of Claudius is justified by the Ghost’s revelation that Claudius is a murderer and putative adulterer, but so does the fact that Hamlet despises Claudius to begin with cloud the single-minded motivation required of Hamlet to seek the vengeance to which the Ghost exhorts him.

There is much that is subjective in Eliot’s evaluation, of course, and Eliot himself wisely avoids suggesting any concrete ways in which Shakespeare might have improved the play. The point is that Eliot takes the opportunity to pontificate on finding a serious flaw in one of the world’s greatest tragic plays, and he not only gets away with it but enhances his own reputation and credentials as a critical intellect in the process. The real issue is not whether Eliot is correct in his assessment of Hamlet or whether the objective correlative, albeit an original coinage, is a wholly original formulation on Eliot’s part. Rather, the focus should be on how influential the term has become as a critical commonplace, bespeaking the authority that Eliot acquired early on in his career as a critic.

There appear, as with virtually all Eliot’s ideas, to be subtleties that are either not sufficiently explicated or too facilely glossed over in his explanation of the aesthetic phenomenon that Eliot speaks of when he defines the objective correlative; but it is easy to get the general idea, since ultimately the point is well taken if regarded solely as a creative rule of thumb. In terms of the poetic arts, Eliot is arguing that an emotion cannot merely be named but must be demonstrated, represented, evoked, by something that is itself not the emotion but that in the proper context and at the right moment will nevertheless bring to mind in the reader the specific emotion that the poet desires to elicit. To achieve this, of course, the poet must be quite conscious of the effect or effects that he or she is hoping to achieve, so, in essays such as “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot will argue for the impersonality both of artistic process and of the artist, by which he would mean that poetry is not self-expression but the precise expression of emotions unique to the work itself.

The yellow fog in Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” may provide as good an example as any of the objective correlative in operation as an impersonal process of the creative mind aiming to achieve not self-expression but a specific effect. The mental image of such a fog undoubtedly colors the reader’s response not only to the scene that the poem is setting but to the tone and mood that it thus evokes, creating an atmosphere of the lurid and the sickly that both works against and complements the characterization both of Prufrock and of his life and social milieu that is emerging through the poetry. Furthermore, the yellow fog is rendered finally in the aspect of a feral animal, reminding the reader, perhaps, of details from the opening stanza, where the evening sky is personified in a surprising and disturbing way as an etherized patient and where the tawdry and lurid are suggested by references to sleazy hotels and lowclass dining establishments.

This accumulation of details that are unsettling in their potential for revealing a seamy sordidness just underlying and certainly thereby enveloping Prufrock’s otherwise stately but stale world, both in its physical realities and in its psychological impact on him, is embodied in the yellow fog, which strikes just the right note to summarize the emotions that the poetry appears to be attempting to provoke in the reader—disgust, curiosity, sympathy, caution. That yellow fog, then, in keeping with Eliot’s own definition, can be said to function as an objective correlative, triggering the sought-for emotional response in the reader by presenting rather than stating all of these tonal colorations. The fog is, as Eliot would say, an external detail adequate to the emotions, inevitably leading to them; in other words, it is an objective correlative for those emotions.

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Module B Essay – T.S Eliot

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The quest for understanding and enlightenment is futile within the constraints of empty societal constructs. T.S Eliot’s oeuvre of poems depicts the tension between the vacuity of modern European society and the universal journey for self-discovery, fabricating a canonical piece that is inherently laced with textual integrity. Eliot exposes the detriments of modernism on the psyche in ‘ The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock ’ (1910), ‘ The Hollow Men ’ (1925) and ‘ The Journey of the Magi ’ (1927), as his synthesis of form, content and rhetoric subtly reflects his own search for identity. Written during an era of disintegrating forces that fragment the conventions of romanticism, Eliot captures the despair of early modernist society in his critical portrayal of societal constructs. Sustained throughout Eliot’s corpus is the struggle to escape the pervasiveness of monotony with the culmination of Eliot’s quest in ‘Magi’ exposing the ultimate truth that religion cannot sufficiently fulfill the vacuum of meaning society has torn. Hence, Eliot forges a timeless body of literature in his representation of society as an everlasting obstacle in the pursuit of personal meaning.

Societal constructs impose a blanket of triviality that suffocates the potential for enlightenment. The dramatic monologue ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ upholds textual integrity through its lasting depiction of the impact of shifting social contexts on the psyche. Modernism saw a rejection of religious guidance, with the collapse of spiritual affirmation increasing individuals’ desire for social validation. The conflict between tradition and change, as romanticism moved to modernism, is epitomized in the intertextual epigraph, as Eliot draws on the classic Dante’s Inferno (1476) to employ an objective correlative between the narcissism of Guido and the titular Prufrock. The extended allusion to the epigraph echoed in Prufrock’s obsession with his image confirms that the motif of an ‘overwhelming question’ is centered upon embracing introspection. The parenthetical insertion ‘(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)’, structurally interrupts the stanza, symbolising the disruptive nature of self-consciousness in achieving self-discovery. The stultifying effect of a spiritual vacuum is captured in the conduplicatio; “Prepare a face to meet the faces” with the repetition expressing the monotonous cycle of urban life. Prufrock ultimately avoids the ‘overwhelming question,’ instead escaping his journey to self-discovery by preoccupying himself with trivial facades noted in the rhetorical question; “Shall I part my hair behind?’ The poem’s canonical status is invoked through Eliot’s exploration of the universal tension between the imperative yet confronting nature of introspection, exposing the complex quest for meaning in the modern world.

The powerful omnipresence of societal constructs limit self-actuated enlightenment. Eliot’s revolutionary piece ‘The Hollow Men’, employs a free-verse form to reflectively encapsulate his profound realisation that modern society is a formation of purposeless facades. Written months after a psychotic breakdown, the paradoxical anaphora; “We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men,” symbolically portrays Eliot’s acknowledgement of the modern man’s inability to connect with new constructs that ‘stuff’ us with false meaning. While Eliot embodies pessimistic naturalism, theorist David Buckley argues that the subtly threaded biblical allusions, noted in “fading star”, displays Eliot and the hollowmen’s quest for unified meaning. The dichotomies that plague Eliot’s context, with the challenge of Romanticism and Modernism, Religion and Naturalism, solipsism and omniscience, coalesce a paradoxical narrative in ‘The Hollowmen’ as Eliot ridicules societal constructs only to entertain the notion of religion. The ellipsis in; ‘For Thine is; Life is; For Thine is the…” insinuates a tone of contemplation, as the direct repetition connecting ‘Life’ to the religious ‘Thine’ combines literary elements to imply the promising prospect of faith in achieving a cathartic awakening. The dialectic layers evoke a sense of confusion that mirrors Eliot’s personal identity crisis, maintaining textual integrity while expressing the premise that humans are inescapably surrounded by cycles of tedium. Thus, ‘The Hollow Men’ canonically portrays the premise that the modern man will no longer search within but search throughout societal constructs for meaning.

While religion is classically displayed as the key to self-discovery, societal constructs prevail as an obstacle in the path of spiritual fulfillment. ‘Journey of the Magi’ captures Eliot’s spiritual awakening as he grapples with his religious conversion. The restrictive facades of society exemplified in ‘Prufrock’ and ‘The Hollowmen’ are reflected in the declarative; ‘We regretted the summer palaces on slopes.’ The Romantic tone created by the sibilance is contrasted by the connotations of ‘regret’, where Eliot concludes to separate himself from societal constructs such as these ‘palaces’ to reach true meaning. However, Eliot’s portrayal of Jesus’s epiphanic birth is satirized through the use of low modality and flippant tone; ‘it was (you might say) satisfactory,’ revealing the judgement that religion offers little consolation. In fact, at the culmination of the poem, the Magi must return to society, ‘but [are] no longer at ease ,’ representative of Eliot’s despondency with the modern world’s obsession with logicality and technology at the expense of higher cultural and spiritual meaning. The truncated final line; ‘I should be glad of another death,’ exerts a sense of hopelessness espousing Eliot’s ultimate loss of confidence in the quest for self-discovery

Within the modern world self-discovery is futile. Eliot’s collection of poems expose the tediums and detriments of the new world that has shifted from the comforts of romanticism. The desire for identity and spiritual awakening is hindered by the masks individuals and society create to evoke a sense of false meaning. ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and ‘The Hollow-men’ display the impacts of society on individual enlightenment whilst ‘The Journey of the Magi’ cynically rejects religion as a final answer. Eliot’s dark analysis of self-discovery amplified by his personal ennui, insinuates the emptiness of humanity’s societal and religious constructs, maintaining a canonical status and textual integrity.

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T.S. Eliot on Writing: His Warm and Wry Letter of Advice to a Sixteen-Year-Old Girl Aspiring to Become a Writer

By maria popova.

“If you write what you yourself sincerely think and feel and are interested in,” the great marine biologist and author Rachel Carson advised a blind girl aspiring to be a writer , “you will interest other people.” Six years earlier, around Valentine’s Day of 1952, a sixteen-year-old self-described “aspiring Young Writer” by the name of Alice Quinn reached out to T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) — by that point one of the most famous writers in the world — hoping he might answer several questions about the creative process, what it takes to be a writer, and how he himself developed his creative faculties.

Unlike Carson and unlike Albert Einstein, who also frequently replied to fan letters , particularly those from young people , Eliot rarely did. But something about the young woman’s earnest inquiry touched him. His response — thoroughly warm and just the right amount of wry, full of simply worded wisdom — may be his most direct statement of advice on writing. It was only ever published in Hockney’s Alphabet ( public library ) — that wonderful, forgotten 1991 charity project raising funds for AIDS research through short essays by famous writers about the letters of the alphabet , each illustrated by artist David Hockney. Provided by his Eliot’s, Valerie, his response to Alice Quinn — the only posthumous contribution to the volume — appears under the letter Q.

Nearly four decades after he stunned the world with his masterpiece “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and four years after he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, Eliot writes to the young aspiring writer:

Dear Miss Alice Quinn, I do not often answer letters, because I am too busy; but I liked your letter, and I am glad that you are at a Catholic school. I cannot tell you how to concentrate, because that is something I have been trying to learn all my life. There are spiritual exercises in concentration, but I am not the person to teach what I am trying to learn. All I know is that if you are interested enough, and care enough, then you concentrate. But nobody can tell you how to start writing. The only good reason for writing is that one has to write. You ask seven questions. No one event in one’s childhood starts one writing: no doubt a number of “events” and other causes. That remains mysterious.

In consonance with Carson, Eliot adds:

My advice to “up and coming writers” is, don’t write at first for anyone but yourself. It doesn’t matter how many or how few universities one goes to, what matters is what one learns, either at universities or by oneself. My favourite essay, I think, is my essay on Dante, not because I know much about Dante, but because I loved what I wrote about. The Waste Land is my most famous work, and therefore perhaps will prove the most important, but it is not my favourite.

Alice apparently asked Eliot about some of the criticism aimed at his poetry and his person — the perennial lazy accusation that anything sophisticated is automatically elitist — for he reflects:

I am interested to hear that Kunitz & Haycraft say that I prefer to associate with Nobility and Church Dignitaries, but I like to know every sort of person, including Nobility and Dignitaries. I also like to know Policemen, Plumbers and People.

He returns to the subject of how one grows equipped to be a writer:

One does not always need to know a subject very well in order to teach it: what one does need to know is How to Teach Anything. I went to a very good school (which no longer exists) in St. Louis, Missouri, where I was well taught in Latin, Greek, French and elementary Mathematics. Those are the chief subjects worth learning at school; and I am glad that I was well taught in these subjects, instead of having to study such subjects as T.S. Eliot. At the University I studied too many subjects, and mastered none. If you study Latin, Greek, French, Mathematics, and the essentials of the Christian Faith, that is the right beginning. I like living in London, because it is my City, and I am happier there than anywhere else. With best wishes, T.S. Eliot

Complement this particular portion Hockney’s Alphabet , which is out of print but well worth the hunt, with T.S. Eliot on the nature of time , Lewis Carroll’s advice to a young woman on how to overcome creative block , and Beethoven’s touching letter of advice on being an artist , sent in reply to a fan letter from a little girl, then revisit other timeless advice on writing from Susan Sontag , Ernest Hemingway , William Faulkner , James Baldwin , Umberto Eco , Friedrich Nietzsche , and Ursula K. Le Guin .

— Published January 18, 2018 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/01/18/t-s-eliot-alice-quinn-letter/ —

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TS Eliot Essay

This is an example of a high range response of a TS Eliot essay. As a critical study, the respondent must assess his work as a whole and be aware of the broader contextual impact of the work. This response is for the 2013 English HSC.

Explore how time and place are used in Eliot’s poetry to shape the reader’s understanding of modernity.

In your response, make detailed reference to at least TWO of the poems set for study.

T.S. Eliot’s poetry examines how individuals in modernity are trapped by materialistic values, limiting their experiential perspectives to particular times and places. In a world riddled with uncertainty in the wake of vast ideological and political changes spurred on by the scientific enlightenment and subsequent industrial hegemony of Western imperial nations, the poet’s work often contrasts traditional metaphysical ideals with the vacuum of modern nihilism.  Whereas Eliot’s first professionally published poem The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock TLSJAP (June 1915) philosophically wrestles in uncertainty with the relentless power of this new world, his later work The Hollow Men THM (November 1925) succinctly critiques the limitations of a solely modernistic value system.

Even in Eliot’s earliest work, his reverence for past wisdom and curiosity for non-physical places are evident.  The infinitely internal and publicly shy poet begins TLSJAP by intertextually invoking Dante in its original latin format, inviting the audience into a version of hell through the eyes of a poet in the Late Middle Ages. Dante’s protagonist believes that if someone were able to escape hell, “this flame would keep still without moving any further.” However, as the protagonist and all who hear him are trapped in the allegory of “those undergrounds” or for a figurative interpretation, the hell of one’s own mind; he is able to “answer you” (himself), “without fear of infamy” as the poet would be unable to suffer rejection or ridicule from within the confines of his own psyche. It is in this way that Eliot is able to express both his interpersonal sense of isolation where he does not “dare” to disturb other people in a social setting as well as the dread and confusion that develops from symbolically daring to “disturb the universe” through existential inquiry. By reading his poetry, the audience is invited into a realm that both emphasises the physical constraints of modern materialistic reality where literally and figuratively, “in a minute there is time”, whilst simultaneously using the wisdom of the ancients to query the “hundred indecisions … hundred visions and revisions” that transcend individual experience and instead serves as a reminder of the many facets of existence where the universe paradoxically has “time to murder and create” across time and space .

At the turn of the nineteenth century the “madman who lit a lantern” screeching “Whither is God?” had left a deep existential void for Western thinkers in modernity. Eliot wrestles with Nietzsche’s assessment of the encroaching societal nihilism in TLSJAP by positing: “But as if a magic lantern threw nerves in patterns on a screen”. The simplicity of the simile and Eliot’s recurring motif of lamp light symbolises humanity’s limited capacity for creation in “the chambers of the [sublime] sea”, where the folly of modern man’s hubris is alluded to with “Prince Hamlet” and the rise of Western materialism serving as the precursor “to swell progress” symbolically in the modern world. Ultimately this merely serves as a temporary respite for what the “worshippers of the machine” choose to forget,  as “human voices” are the only one’s viewed as rational enough to “wake us” in a time where man is the master and creator of all until “we drown”, the finality of death being inevitable to a 20th Century intellectual mind. Modernity serves as a stage for examining the absurdity of existence with a self conscious protagonist who is ironically concerned with whether he will “part” his hair or wear his “trousers rolled” whilst simultaneously grappling with metaphysical questions like having “squeezed a universe into a ball” of consciousness. J. Hillis Miller interprets as an “opaque sphere” of subjectivity where each “Lazarus” (human) who has been brought into existence in their own “impenetrable” bubble of experience and understanding, is stuck in the timeless angst of their own mind as their impending death looms.

As a critic, Eliot’s THM draws inspiration from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, to the poet, the value placed on materialism in the modern world is viewed as hollow, much like an ivory tusk that has been removed by Kurtz as he parades around as a god before his untimely demise. Eliot parodies the shortsightedness of modern man by referring to him as someone with a “Headpiece filled with straw”, an allusion to “pagan rituals” according to Grover Smith. Once more through literary fragmentation the poet slips into and out of his own context to explore the subjectivity of meaning from a relativistic perspective; to the poet, the “quiet and meaningless” voices of men are paralleled with “wind in dry grass” and “rats’ feet” which to a 20th Century modernist would have no inherent purpose. The symbolic “cactus land” that modern man inhabits and “At five o’clock in the morning” in futility goes “round the prickly pear”, a parody on the “divine” tree which places the nihilistic thinker in a position that resembles Sisyphus with his rock. The solitude of city life is apparent as the poet wonders whether it is “like this” in “death’s other kingdom” where the machine men are “walking alone”, babies “trembling with tenderness” in a “hollow valley” that only values  “stone images” which glorify the materialistic might of the Western world.

It would be a disservice to assess THM without reflecting on Eliot’s most well known work The Waste Land; a poem that critiques the modern notion of progress without consideration, a time and place that lacks “roots” to “clutch” onto the “stony rubbish” that has been constructed by the “Son of man”. Again, the poet considers past wisdom that to the modern individual is “more distant” than a “fading star” as the “twilight kingdom” of death is treated with little regard in modernity, a time where materialists are “Sightless, unless / The eyes reappear”, a primitive “hope” for a species of “empty men” who have destroyed themselves with war. As if in a game of hide and seek, Eliot seeks the places where the symbolic “Shadow” of meaning resides. By placing the audience’s mind in “deliberate disguises” like “crowskin”, Eliot emphasises through pathetic fallacy man’s connection to the “voices” that are apparent to the poet “Between the conception / And the creation”, the metaphysical place being the “Kingdom” of the “multifoliate rose”, infinite time and potential.

Eliot grips his audience in a place that knows no time, the infinitely creative mind; he does this as he earnestly considers the events and thinking of his personal context and the wisdom that has illuminated the modern mind as the cult of progress developed and devalued the knowledge that came before. By seeking knowledge in the angst of his own mind as well as that of contemporary thinkers who had influenced global events, the poet is able to look beyond the veil of time and space in order to appreciate the sublime. He empathises with modernity, a time which whimpers into nothingness as the bombs fall and the business men circle in their suits but reminds the respondent to consider their own roots when seeking meaning.

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A Summary and Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ is an essay by T. S. Eliot; it began life as an address Eliot gave to the Shakespeare Association on 18 March 1927 before being published on 22 September of that year. Although it is Eliot’s poetry that has endured, and his reputation as a perceptive and provocative critic has dwindled slightly since the 1920s, this short essay demonstrates the precise qualities that made Eliot such an original and valuable thinker.

‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’: summary

Eliot argues that every new generation tends to reinvent ‘Shakespeare’, finding a new way to discuss the poet and playwright, often in ways which are far removed from the reality. In Eliot’s opinion, it is a good thing that new interpretations of Shakespeare’s work, examining his writing through different lenses, come along, not because these new readings are any closer to the truth, but because they at least succeed in making the older erroneous interpretations unfashionable.

Having sketched out how previous critics and biographers have endeavoured to show how Shakespeare was influenced by different Renaissance thinkers – the French essayist Montaigne, and the Italian political philosopher Machiavelli – Shakespeare proposes his own new approach to Shakespeare, which involves acknowledging the importance of stoicism, as it is outlined in the prose writings of the ancient Roman writer Seneca, in Shakespeare’s plays.

Stoicism is the philosophical belief that we should accept that there are things in the world that we cannot change, and to minimise the effect that harmful things can have on us accordingly.

In other words, we simply refuse to let them affect us. With his tongue in his cheek, Eliot declares that he is only proposing such a new approach in the hope that it will prevent such a theory being put forward by someone else in the future.

Eliot freely acknowledges that Shakespeare almost certainly never read any of Seneca’s philosophical works in prose, which are ‘dull’; he also admits that Seneca’s plays, which Shakespeare had probably encountered (at grammar school), don’t really reflect the stoical approach to life. But Shakespeare may have encountered the principles of stoicism at second- or third-hand, via other writers.

Comparing Shakespeare to the medieval Italian poet Dante, Eliot argues that neither poet did any real thinking, for that ‘was not their job’: instead, they drew upon the thought of their times, such as the theology of St Thomas in Dante’s case.

Both Shakespeare and Dante are great poets, but Shakespeare’s poetry is often great even though the philosophy underpinning it is, in Eliot’s view, inferior to the thought underpinning Dante’s poetry. The important thing is that both Dante and Shakespeare express timeless human emotions through their poetry.

Eliot makes the famous pronouncement that ‘The great poet, in writing himself, writes his time.’ Both Dante and Shakespeare express ‘private failures’, ‘rage’, or ‘disappointments’, but they ‘metamorphose’ or transform these into something universal and reflective of the age in which the poets live.

Shakespeare had an ability to draw upon ideas that were current during his lifetime and create great poetry out of them, and these ideas include the stoicism of Seneca, which was already widely disseminated throughout Shakespeare’s world, so finds its way into his work in all sorts of ways.

‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’: analysis

‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ begins in a rather casual or even flippant manner, with Eliot stating that he wishes to propose the idea of Shakespeare as a Senecan stoic if only to prevent the idea from taking hold in literary-critical circles. But Eliot goes on to advance his thesis in some detail, revealing it to be a matter to which he has devoted considerable thought.

Eliot sees the stoicism of ancient Rome re-emerging in the Renaissance, and this stoicism informs the growing self-consciousness which Eliot detects in many of Shakespeare’s heroes, including Hamlet and Othello. This is a new attitude, which leads, ultimately, to the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas were still relatively new when Eliot was writing.

Fundamentally, the stoical attitude derived – albeit indirectly – from Seneca which Eliot detects in much Renaissance drama, including the plays of Shakespeare, is an attitude of ‘self-dramatisation’. Usually this attitude manifests itself most explicitly during the great final speeches of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes: when Othello dies, or Hamlet speaks to Horatio before dying (‘The rest is silence’), for example.

The Shakespearean tragic hero to whom Eliot pays the closest attention in ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ is Othello, whose dying words reveal a man who is ‘ cheering himself up ’ (Eliot’s emphasis). Othello is trying to escape reality, the world immediately around him, in his dying moments, and taking his mind off Desdemona, his wife whom he has murdered in the erroneous belief she had been unfaithful to him. Instead of thinking about what he has done to Desdemona, Othello turns his thoughts to himself .

He dramatises himself as a method of coping with what he has done, and through self-dramatising he shows his determination to ignore reality and to ‘see things as they are not’.

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How to Write an Informative Essay: Basics Information and Effective Tips

A professional writer with ten years of experience and a Ph.D. in Modern History, Catharine Tawil writes engaging and insightful papers for academic exchange. With deep insight into the impact of historical events on the present, she provides a unique perspective in giving students a feel for the past. Her writing educates and stimulates critical thinking, making her a treasure to those wading through the complexities of history.

An informational essay is one of the academic writing projects college students have to deal with. Excellent writing skills, deep understanding of the topic, attention to detail, awareness of the essay formatting styles, and maximum inspiration are indispensable for the achievement of the desired results. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to academic writing projects, a lot of students have hard time dealing with them. The absence of necessary analytical skills, lack of logical thinking and zero motivation are the most common reasons of the failure. Are such learners destined to fail? Some of them choose to entrust their success to professional writers, while others start working harder to add to their writing skills. 

If you are one of those ambitious and hard-working learners who strives to create influential, interesting, and appealing papers, this article is for you. Keep reading to find catchy and inspiring informative essay topics, helpful tips, and recommendations that will guide you through the writing process and will advance your chances to come up with a relevant paper. Start with the definition and basic peculiarities of the paper before you dive into the specific aspects and unique characteristics of the paper. Follow the examples to practice your skills and thrive with college writing assignments. 

What Is an Informative Essay?

Working on the academic writing project can be either an exciting or an overwhelming experience, which depends mainly on your knowledge and expertise. Students who know nothing about the essay and its peculiarities are likely to struggle to meet all the requirements and create an impressive paper. At the same time, learners, who focus on the effective tips and writing guidelines have higher chances to succeed. 

What do you start your writing journey with? The definition is the first thing to pay attention to. What is an informative essay? It is a piece of academic writing that aimed to present relevant and unbiased information on a specific topic. The main idea of the paper is to enlighten and educate target audience, encouraging readers to make their own conclusions about the discussed matters. 

The absence of personal opinion and biased information is one of the most prominent characteristics of the essay. At the same time, the writer can present certain information that supports or denies an idea. The key peculiarities of the essay are:

How to Start an Informative Essay?

If you know the basics of academic writing, you should be aware of the ultimate importance of the introductory passage. It is undeniably one of the most prominent parts of the paper, as it predetermines the further interest of the readers towards the whole piece. Thus, the main goal of the writer here is to impress, intrigue, and allure the audience. 

Browsing the web, you will come across a multitude of effective and appealing tips and tricks on how to keep the informative essay introduction thrilling and relevant. Focus on the most effective recommendations so that you know how to present your main ideas. 

At this point, it is also indispensable to mention that working on the informative text, the introduction will be the last part to deal with. Why? Because it will be much simpler to create a persuasive and appealing hook and thesis when you know the details of the discussed topic. Make sure the informative essay thesis statement is up-to-date and not widely discussed among writers. Even if the topic is not new and quite popular, you can always view the matter from a different perspective. Focus on the extraordinary aspects that will make readers analyze the same concept but from another angle. 

Informative Essay Introduction: The Importance of the Passage

The main purpose of the informative text is to explain, inform, and teach the readers. Relevant facts, meaningful information taken from credible data sources, ultimate attention to extraordinary ideas on trivial topics, and appealing facts are indispensable for writing a stunning and highly valued paper. 

Like most academic projects, informative essay starts with the introduction that plays critical role in the whole text. This is a comparatively short passage that takes 10-15% of the word count and aims at grabbing the reader’s attention, introducing the topic, and providing a thesis statement. Some background information, interesting facts, statistics, and little details can contribute to the relevance of the passage. Additionally, a brief summary of key ideas explained in the essay may be helpful. 

Keep in mind that too much information presented in the introduction may affect the reader’s desire to view the rest of the paper. Therefore, include only the most significant and interesting facts.

Informative Essay Thesis Statement: An Important Element to Include 

Even though the introductory passage is comparatively short and concise, it should also be divided into a few critical parts. The opening sentence is a hook that should attract the reader’s attention and keep them excited about the essay. Then comes background information that introduces a little bit more data about the analyzed topic. Finally, the last sentence of the introductory part is a thesis statement of the informative essay. 

In a nutshell, a thesis statement is a central idea of the whole text. It not only emphasizes the theme of the paper but also highlights the most critical aspects that will be enlightened and discussed in the paper. The formulation of the most critical sentence may take some time, but it is completely worth it. A quality pre-writing stage may help to create a consistent, informative essay outline and single out the thesis statement, which will hardly leave the readers indifferent. 

Keep reading for more writing tips and recommendations that will help you advance your academic skills, expand vision, and get helpful instruments that will aid your studying process. Focus on the most critical elements that seem easy to implement and effective. 

Informative Essay Conclusion: Effective Tips to Keep It Meaningful 

A flawless structure is one of the critical aspects of college writing, no matter what type of form of the paper you are working on. College students, expert writers, and a lot of other people are convinced that the introduction and conclusion are the central parts of any text. These are short and informative passages that help to get a brief summary of the ideas and thoughts mentioned in the body part. 

Consequently, it is critical to keep these elements concise, appealing, and relevant. When it comes to the concluding part of the informational essay, it should not be a bare overview of the essay content. Instead, it should be a comprehensive piece of writing that sums up the main ideas and encourages readers to meditate on the presented facts. Here are a few of the most prominent elements to be included in the passage:

• Brief summary of the main ideas
• Reiteration of the thesis statement
• Meaningful conclusions
• Interesting ideas for further research

According to the experts of Purdue Global University, informative writing is not about presenting facts, it is about making readers analyze complex ideas and single out critical conclusions. Readers do not have to agree with all the arguments presented in the paper but should analyze them instead and choose the points of view they agree and disagree with.

How to Write an Informative Essay: Dos and Don'ts 

Similar to other types of scholarly projects, informative texts require ultimate precision and accuracy. Only the most relevant facts and appealing details should be included in the papers. Additionally, it is fundamental to remember that all the requirements of academic writing should be met. Check out the lists of dos and don’ts in informative essay creation that might help you succeed with the project. 

• Use credible data sources. With the development of technology, students forget about libraries and books. Instead, they prefer to search for the necessary information online, which increases the risk of using fake sources. Be cautious and selective, taking advantage of acceptable, relevant, and appropriate websites and services only. 
• Be precise and clear. Working on academic projects, fact-checking is a must. Do not include contradictory information and other elements that can affect the quality of your paper. Make sure you also write clearly so that the text is easy to read and understand. An informative essay outline is one of the most effective tools that can be used for the achievement of the desired results. 
• Use evidence to support your arguments. As the writer’s task is to be unbiased and objective, every statement should be backed by factual and logical information. Avoid any appeal to emotions or feelings, but rather focus on impersonal data. Profound reserach and analysis of the available information are the steps that should be taken for the achievement of the necessary results. 
• Use diverse sentence structure. Academic writing should be interesting and appealing. Therefore, you should make maximum effort to keep your text corresponding. Varying sentence structure is one of the most effective tips for achieving the goal. 
• Do not make generalizations. Stay specific as you present information, avoiding any generalizations and exaggerations. These are the things that can make people agree to contradictory and questionable ideas. 
• Do not address the reader directly. The main idea of informative paper writing is to present relevant data rather than persuade the audience. Avoid addressing the readers and use personal pronouns in cases they cannot be eliminated. 
• Do not use slang or colloquial language. Formal style, proper citing, and compliance with other academic requirements are indispensable for creation of an influential, and impressive paper. 

Informative Essay Outline

The definition, basic requirements, and peculiarities of the paper may help to succeed with its writing. However, there are a few other pre-writing stages of work that should be taken into account while working on the project. 

Outline creation is a significant step that draws writers much closer to flawless paper writing. Nonetheless, it is indispensable to mention that striving to succeed with the undertaking, learners have to take a few other steps. 

• Choose the topic of the paper. There is no way you start working on the paper unless you know the exact aspect or concept you want to analyze. Take your time to browse the web and find the most inspirational ideas. Single out the most appealing ones and work focus on the question you are interested in. Avoid trivial topics that are widely discussed online. 
• Brainstorm the theme. Surf the web for information on the topic. Pay attention to credible and reliable sources only so that you can find appealing facts that will make your paper influential and appealing. 
• Analyze available information. Read as much information on the topic as possible, make notes, and write down the most critical features you want to emphasize in your paper. 
• Create an informative essay outline. Following the notes, come up with a comprehensive plan for your paper. Do not include a lot of details, but rather include a few sentences that will guide you during the writing process. 

When you succeed with these stages of work, your paper is half-ready. Keep reading for more information about the critical elements that should be included in the outline. 

Informative Essay Introduction

First of all, the outline should start with the introductory passage. Present the topic of your informative essay in the most appealing and intriguing way. Add some background information, and finalize the passage with a thesis statement. 

Informative Essay Body

The body part is the biggest and the most informative one. Nonetheless, working on the outline, you need to skip all the details and focus on the basics. Divide the main body into a few paragraphs, each introducing a different argument and evidence that supports it. Do not forget to add some linking words and transition sentences to keep your informational essay concise. 

Informative Essay Conclusion 

The final part of the essay outline is a conclusion. Similar to the introduction, it should be comparatively short. The reiteration of the thesis statement, a brief summary of the most critical aspects, and a reflection on the further topic analysis should be included in the passage. 

Find a sample informative essay outline if you still doubt your ability to create a well-structured and coherent piece. Additionally, keep in mind that there is always an opportunity to get qualified help with your academic projects. No matter if you struggle with the outline creation or you want your informative paper to be written from scratch, you can pay for essay and let professionals do their job. 

Writepaperfor.me is one of the most time-tested and reputable custom essay writing platforms that guarantees qualified assistance, excellence in details, anonymity of the experience, individual approach to every customer, and timely submission of assignments appreciated by learners. Talk to the support team to find the answers to the questions that bother you, and take your chance to succeed. 

How to Write an Informative Essay: Structure to Follow

At this point you are aware of the basic requirements to the academic writing projects. However, there are a few other little details that can help you create the paper that will impress the readers right from the very first sentence. Check out some of the effective tips to make an informational essay writing a no-brainer. 

How to Write an Informative Essay Introduction?

The pre-writing stage of work is critical. Make sure you have enough information, examples, facts, and evidence so that your introduction is appealing and interesting. Start the passage with an enticing hook that gives a hint of the topic. Do not reveal many details about the informative essay so that the readers anticipate the rest of the text. Other elements to be included in the introduction are:

• Background information
• Thesis statement

How to Write an Informative Essay Body?

The body part should present an in-depth analysis of the topic. Divide the passage into paragraphs, each introducing a different aspect of the same question. Start each paragraph with the topical sentence, but make sure the passages are properly linked. The logical flow of the ideas is important, as it helps to keep the informational essay coherent and concise. 

How to Write an Informative Essay Conclusion?

The conclusion is aimed at summing up the core ideas of the discussion. Do not present any new information, but rather focus on the points, analyzed in the body part. Reiteration of the thesis statement, and encouragement for further analysis of the topic are the extra elements to be included in the informative essay conclusion. 

Once you are done with the first draft of your paper, make sure you proofread and edit the text. These are the elements that will add to the quality of your writing and will eliminate punctuation, grammar, or formatting mistakes. Besides, it is an extra chance to check if the paper complies with all the requirements. 

Informative Essay Topics: Top 10 Inspirational Ideas 

The choice of the essay topic is the first and the most prominent thing to focus on as you start working on the assignment. Make sure the topic you opt for is appealing and interesting for you. This way, it will be easier for you to complete the assignment. Additionally, focus on the themes that are relevant, up-to-date, unique, and rarely discussed. Check out a few informative essay topics that will inspire you and guide you to the necessary choice. 

• American Civil War: the history behind the event
• Advantages of genetically modified foods
• Effects and causes of global warming
• The way technology affects education
• Nuclear energy and its impact on human lives
• Advancement of AI technology 
• Agriculture and its impact on the social life of human
• Regular exercise and its advantages for the quality of human lives
• Gender equality and the challenges related to it
• Mental health issues and their treatments

How to Write an Informative Essay: Tips and Recommendations 

The final stage of the project is proofreading and editing the text. This is the way to eliminate any inaccuracies and mistakes that can affect the quality of the project. Check out the checklist to make sure your paper complies with the requirements. 

• Start with the captivating topic
• Take your time to research the theme
• Create a well-structured informative essay outline
• Come up with a strong thesis 
• Focus on the appealing introduction 
• Provide reasonable evidence in every passage
• Add examples to confirm the arguments
• Proofread and edit the paper 
• Focus on conciseness and clarify 
• Keep the paper objective and unbiased
• Search for interesting, informative essay ideas 

Stick to the recommendations so that you create an appealing and well-structured paper that meets all the requirements. 

Informative Essay Examples

Writing academic papers is a challenging and time-consuming undertaking that requires attention to detail, and excellence in every single aspect. In the vast majority of instances, students struggle to create an influential and appealing text worth appreciation. Is there an effective way to improve the situation? 

Reading and analyzing informative essay examples is a great step that will inspire you, guide you, and draw you closer to the achievement of the desired results. Surfing the web, learners can come across a multitude of consistent papers that can serve as a source of inspiration and helpful writing tools. Check out the write my paper page, which contains a comprehensive collection of papers that can provide you with the necessary information and writing tips. Apart from the custom writing assistance the team of professionals offers, they can also help with separate elements of the informative paper you struggle with. 

How to Write an Informative Essay: FAQs

What are the key elements to include in the informative essay .

Like any other type of a college writing project, an impeccable structure is a must for similar assignments. Some elements of the text are optional, but the informative essay introduction, main body, and conclusion should never be skipped. Keep this parts of the essay informative and concise to contribute to the quality of the writing piece. Proper transition and logical presentation of information are also important. 

Are there any formatting requirements to meet? 

Irrespective of certain flexibility, an informative essay should be well-structured and formatted in compliance with regulations. There is no universal citation style for this type of project, but learners have to follow the APA, MLA, Harvard, or any other formatting style they have chosen. 

How long should an informative essay be? 

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