Preludes
The Winter Evening Settles Down
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
Preludes by T.S. Eliot
First, I would like you to read, re-read, annotate and then analyze Prelude I ("The Winter Evening Settles Down") in the comments section below this post. Remember to analyze the entire poem, stanza by stanza, line by line. Think about the author's intention, the tone, rhythm, rhyme, figurative language, and imagery. What do you take away from this poem? Why is it significant? What are the themes Eliot wants to show us?
Once you have fully analyzed "Prelude I", click on the link above and analyze the entirety of the poem. How does all of "Preludes" change your reading of "The Winter Evening Settles Down"? Post your analysis of "Preludes" as a reply under your comment that contains your original analysis of "The Winter Evening Settles Down".
First, I would like you to read, re-read, annotate and then analyze Prelude I ("The Winter Evening Settles Down") in the comments section below this post. Remember to analyze the entire poem, stanza by stanza, line by line. Think about the author's intention, the tone, rhythm, rhyme, figurative language, and imagery. What do you take away from this poem? Why is it significant? What are the themes Eliot wants to show us?
Once you have fully analyzed "Prelude I", click on the link above and analyze the entirety of the poem. How does all of "Preludes" change your reading of "The Winter Evening Settles Down"? Post your analysis of "Preludes" as a reply under your comment that contains your original analysis of "The Winter Evening Settles Down".
This poem describes a winter evening. Eliot uses detailed descriptions of his surroundings to give us a clear image of this particular setting on a street corner in the city. The second line “With the smell of steaks in passageways”, hints that it is time for dinner, as families are cooking steak, and their aroma is wafting out onto the street where Eliot is presumably standing. “And now a gusty shower wraps/ The grimy scraps/ Of withered leaves about your feet/And newspapers from vacant lots” (5-8) tells the reader that a windy rainstorm has begun and is blowing dead leaves and newspapers around. This brilliant imagery gives us a clear vision of this windy night. The poem continues with “The showers beat/ On broken blinds and chimney-pots” (9-10), which illustrates that the rain has intensified and the raindrops are pounding on ‘the broken blinds’, which also hints that this area is slightly run down. Turning attention away from the storm, Eliot writes “And at the corner of the street/ A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.” (11-12). The lonely cab displays that the world is quiet, that everyone has gone home and retired for the evening. The horse pulling this cab is also getting quite antsy in the rainstorm. His final line, “And then the lighting of the lamps” (13) displays that darkness has fallen, as everyone is lighting their lamps, as natural light has dissipated. There is a dark, lonely tone to this poem, and the theme and purpose seem to only be to describe a particular night in Eliot’s life, and how he sees the world.
ReplyDeleteThe following preludes are quite similar to the first, as they all describe another aspect of typical life: the morning and someone waking up and seeing the world. Eliot switches to second person in the third prelude, and goes between third and first in the fourth prelude. In addition, the last two preludes seem to describe the world from someone else’s point of view. This point of view is someone seemingly younger than Eliot, who is more innocent, joyous, and much less critical of the world around him. Eliot is trying to show this boy that the world may not be as great as it seems, there a hidden personalities, malicious people, and this innocent young man will lose his innocence in this world, hidden under the one he sees on the surface. The main purpose of these preludes is summed up in the final stanza, when Eliot writes, “The worlds revolve like ancient women/ Gathering fuel in vacant lots”.
DeleteT. S. Eliot introduces The Winter Evening Settles Down by describing a town during a cold, desolate night. Eliot involves olfactory imagery by incorporating the smell of steaks. The first two stanzas provide a dark and bleak tone, making the reader feel that the town being described is abandoned and uninhabited. The third stanza uses the second person, implying that there is another character in the poem. “Of withered leaves about your feet/ And newspapers from vacant lots/ The showers beat” (Lines 7-9). Eliot makes this person seem peculiar and eerie. Eliot also uses a steady rhyming pattern towards the end of the poem, which ensures that the reader will read in a certain way. This rhythm is not constant throughout the poem, as it only appears twice. Eliot might have created the poem in this way so that he emphasizes the unnatural tone. The ending of the poem, “And then the lighting of the lamps,” (Line 13) leaves the reader hanging, unsure of what is to come.
ReplyDeleteIn the other sections of Preludes, Eliot continues to talk about the environment in the same monotone, gloomy manner, but he also incorporates humans to describe his outlook on the world. This addition enhances my thoughts about the initial section of Preludes because it no longer is describing one cold, winter night in a dreary, boring town. It is describing the daily routines and lives of those who live in this town. Eliot uses terms such as “certain certainties” and “infinitely suffering” to show how he believes that those in his society follow live in an interminable routine. The Winter Evening Settles Down only reveals a glimpse of what Eliot sees in society.
Delete“The Winter Evening Settles Down” by T.S Eliot describes an events of a winter night as everything is coming to an end. Eliot uses descriptive details to describe the feelings and the atmosphere of the night. The first and second stanzas use olfactory imagery to describe the smell of steaks and the crispness of the smoke in the air. There is an eerie tone left with the descriptive words such as “burnt-out” and “grimy”. The town being descried gives off a feeling that it is old and run down. “The showers beat/ On broken blinds and chimney-pots,/ And at the corner of the street/ a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.” (lines 9-14). This quote gives the sensation of the beaten down town and how in the winter everything seems to decline and become dull. The mention of scraps of withered leaves and newspapers in vacant lots tells us that everything is one step behind and everything seems quiet and weary throughout the winter. In this poem, the exceptional imagery helps the reader have a better feel of what Eliot portrays a winter night to feel like.
ReplyDeleteThe second prelude has the same descriptive imagery and dull tone to it that describes the feel of the town. The writer chooses to write as if he were in the shoes of someone living in this town, giving off a better feel of what it is truly like. It is described in a different way, because it is showing there isn't all bad and dusky things to this town, and maybe has some good effects on people living there. It is considered to be dark and dreary, but in the second prelude, it doesn't seem to be this to such an extent. The person describing the world they live in, doesn't see everything in such a negative way and has a better outlook on the world. “The Winter Evening Settles Down”, is just an opinion on the way Eliot sees the world, and can be seen in many different ways, depending on mood, and experience in the place.
DeleteThe first prelude in the poem "This Winter Evening Settles Down" uses expressive visual imagery to paint the picture of a lonely, vacant street on a winter evening. T.S. Eliot also adds details like "With the smell of steaks in passageways" (Line 2) which adds olfactory imagery to further illustrate the scenery in the poem. Though this line may or may not actually stand for the smell of steaks. The steaks could be a symbol for the overpowering pollution released by modern day industrialization. In the next line, "The burnt-out ends of smoky days." is a reference to
ReplyDeletethe end of the day displayed by a piece of wood that has been fully burned. "And now a gusty shower wraps/ the grimy scraps/of withered leaves about you feet/ and newspapers from vacant lots;" (Lines 5-7) is talking about the rain and wind whipping trash and leaves around the desolate town. Nobody has bothered to clean up because there is no one around. The next few lines can be interpreted two different ways; one being that the street is in a place of poverty and the other criticizing society on how little they care about their environment. "The showers beat on broken blinds and chimney-pots,"(Lines 9-10)indicates the incessant rain which stands for the never changing cycle of the day. The lines about the cab-horse again emphasize the vacancy of the street. Then fianlly the last line, "And then the lighting of the lamps." (Line 12) put a glimmer of hope and "light" into the otherwise dismal poem.
The following preludes seem to further stress what TS Eliot is trying to say and incorporate most of the same literary devices as the first stanza. In the second stanza, "The morning comes to consciousness/ of faint stale smells of beer" (Lines 1-2) paints the picture of people who stayed up late drinking and are waking up to a hangover. The
Deletewhole stanza explains the unbreakable routine that the people constantly go through because they don't know anything else. The third stanza is different then the preceding ones because it becomes personal, as if someone specific is being addressed. It is revealed to us that she is most likely a women in line 13, "You curled the papers
from your hair" who has discovered that life means nothing. In the final stanza, Eliot further presses the idea that humans are like clock work, they get into a routine and they stick with it, "At four and five and six o'clock" (Line 4) . "The conscience of a blackened street/impatient to assume the world." (Lines 8-9) is the first time TS Eliot straight
out says what he believes instead of using some sort of literary device. He informs us of what he believes is the harsh reality, there is no nope for society. The very last line brings back up the theme found in the first stanza about the desolate street, "Gathering fuel in vacant lots." Eliot finishes the poem how he started it; it came in a full circle before beginning again which is exactly how he sees the world.
In “The Winter Evening Settles Down”, T.S. Elliot highlights the gloominess of a rainy, winters’ evening by using dark and somber imagery. The reader is introduced to a bleak, calming setting in the first several lines due to the description of the rich smell of steaks cooking, along with the impression of a darkening sky. “The winter evening settles down/ With the smell of steaks in passageways/ Six o’clock.” (1-3) Elliot compares the slow dying fires, common in the wintertime, to the slow end of a winters day in line 4, “The burnt-out ends of smoky days.”(4) This produces an image in the reader’s head of dark ashes and slow crackling of a dying fire, representing the daytime’s disappearance. A cold and eerie mood again is demonstrated when T.S. Elliot depicts a cold winter rain storm and the chaotic mixup of nature and the commercial world created by the wind, as he describes the scraps of leaves and newspaper. He emphasizes a solitary and empty city street as he portrays the auditory imagery of hearing raindrops on “broken blinds and chined-pots”(10) At the end of the poem, the author keeps his consistency by describing the street lamps being lit, which creates the image of a small light glowing in the emptiness of an abandoned street, making the raindrops slightly visible. In this poem, T.S. Elliot presents the slow and dying winter night due to his diction, which creates a cold, solitary, and bleak mood.
ReplyDeleteT.S. Elliot continues the peculiar mood in the second prelude, by again reminding the reader of an empty city. He describes the “stale beer” and the “sawdust trampled street/ With all its muddy feet that press/ To early coffee stands,” suggesting people having been there but by having the ability to see the ground on the street, it is obvious that there are not many people there. He refers to the early morning buzzing and awakening of a cold winters morning by describing the physical reawakening of a person, but emphasizes the gloomy mood again by describing shameful dreams created by the mind, “You dozed, and watched the night revealing/ The thousand sordid images/ Of which your soul was constituted.” T.S. Elliot describes a fascination with struggling, suggesting a morbid approach to this person’s brain. “I am moved by fancies that are curled/ Around these images and cling:/ The notion of some infinitely gentle/ Infinitely suffering thing.” The character becomes progressively more exposed to the reader as the thoughts of the character become clearer and demonstrate an unnatural image compared with the darkness of a winter’s night.
DeleteThe first prelude talks about a wet winter evening. He uses imagery to help the reader picture what the setting looks like. It is an evening with ran showering down. The author describes what is occurring as it rains. The newspapers are blowing around, the leaves are swirling in the gusty wind, and the rain is dropping on the blinds and into the chimney pots. In the first line, it opens up the poem with saying that it is a winter evening. There is most likely a family that is eating dinner together, steaks, at six o’clock, with the smell of the food awaiting through the air. The rain starts and it is described at falling down as it wraps the grimy scraps. This means perhaps that the rain is washing away dirt or some form of something grimy. The author describes the wet leaves that are beneath his feet as the rain falls on them. As the gusty showers occur, the newspaper swirls around in the gusts of wind from vacant lots and litter from the streets. This gives a gloomy feel to the poem because the rain casts a shadow in the mood as well as the wet leaves and litter blowing through the wind. As well as this, the rain beating down on broken blinds and chimney pots creates a gloomy feel because the word broken signifies imperfection. Rain is beating down on that imperfection.
ReplyDeleteThe second prelude talks about the next morning after the rain has stopped. Imagery is used in this prelude as well when it talks about the faint stale smells of beer and the sawdust trampled streets. The streets are covered in mud as people walk along them to go to coffee stands to get something warm to drink. In the third prelude, the author talks about one who is tossing and turning in their bed because he cannot fall asleep. Then, as he finally fell asleep, his mind creating images in his dreams. This is imagery because the author uses specific diction to help the reader picture him laying on his back in his bed with the covers thrown to the side as he dozes off. When the morning broke, and light shined through his shutters, he awoke and sat at the edge of his bed recollecting the dreams he dreamt that night. He hears his surrounding outside; the birds, the leaves, and the vision of the streets. In the fourth prelude, his “soul stretched tight across the skies” meaning that his hopes and dreams were as big as the skies. The author talks again about the times of the day like he did in the first prelude as well as talking about the newspapers. This reoccurrence shows significance with both time and newspaper. The way the author talks about the winter season, it becomes apparent that this is the opinion of the author about winter.
DeleteT.S. Eliot’s first Prelude is a description of what seems like a typical night for the poet. However, the night seems very lonely, and very bleak; almost as if it had happened so many times that it is worn out. Eliot illustrates this with his word choices of “withered,” “broken,” “vacant,” and “lonely.” The main message he is trying to portray is that at the end of every day, life, no matter how complicated it may seem, is always reduced to the same simple, reoccurring cycle it truly is. He carries this message with the help of lots of imagery. The steaks, which provide olfactory imagery, represent the lively and busy things that occurred that day. Then six o’clock hits, and the steak is mentioned no more. It is time to stop working, and head home. For the rest of the stanza, the mood is dreary and bleak. Eliot describes “smoky days,” (1.4) which hints that time has been wasted, or that it is meaningless for the speaker. “Withered leaves about your feet/ And newspapers from vacant lots,” (1.7-8) provide visual imagery and adds to the worn out and forgotten tone of the poem. The rest of the stanza describes common things from everyday life. The last stanza, “And then the lighting of the lamps,” (2.1) makes it seem like Eliot was recounting a cycle. The stanza is only one line long, and is not even a full sentence, which emphasizes this cyclical thought. It is portrayed as a sort of finishing punctuation to the poem.
ReplyDeleteThe next Prelude is portrays the opposite end of the theme. As opposed to showing the cyclical and dreary side of life, particularly night, it shows the hustle and bustle of daytime. The first line portrays the world waking up, slowly coming “to consciousness” with morning and light. Eliot then describes the immediate energy of the world, “With all its muddy feet that press/ To early coffee-stands.” (1.4-5) Although the previously mentioned theme is definitely portrayed within the poem, the last three lines introduce a new theme. “One thinks of all the hands/ That are raising dingy shades/ In a thousand furnished rooms,” (1.8-10) Eliot writes. All the hands represent capable people. The visual imagery of dingy shades in furnished rooms tells that so many people have the ability to do fabulous things, yet they choose to do dreary, unwanted things instead.
DeleteThe image illustrated in “The Winter Evening Settles Down,” takes place in a calming environment, as it describes the end of a hectic day. The author intended to have the reader feel a very specific way when he paints a sedative scene. T.S. Eliot most likely intends to have his poem read by an audience that can relate to the satisfying relief of the end of a busy day. By exploring these emotions, people can be more alert and aware of the beautiful nature all around them that is under appreciated during the daily schedule. “The winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways,”(1-2) here Eliot explains the time of day and the atmosphere by describing a typical dinner meal and the effect that it has on its surrounding, such as the aroma that lingers in the air. “The brunt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet” (4-7) in this metaphor, the end of the day is being compared to brunt-out ends that represent how tiring a day can be and the “smoky” sensations experienced by the hectic day that can blind people of its beauty and serenity. “And at the corner of the street a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.” The reader can put a time period to the poem that it was dated more than a century ago allowing a further understanding of the setting. The poem ends by a final thought, “And then the lighting of the lamps.”(12) It continues the poems rhythm and addså a more intense meaning that even at the end of the day, there is always a light that can make someone’s day better and brighten the mood even at such a dreary time as winter.
ReplyDeleteThe tone of this poem is marked by gloom, darkness, and death. The diction, highlighting words such as “burnt-out,” “withered,” “broken,” and “lonely” play imperative roles in determining the mood of T.S. Eliot’s prelude. Eliot also employs the use of a number of kinds of imagery to conjure the image of a damp and lonely street including olfactory (“With smell of steaks in the passageways.” (Eliot, line 2)) auditory (“The showers beat/On broken blinds and chimney pots” (Eliot, lines 9-10)) and visual (“And now a gusty shower wraps/The grimy scraps/Of withered leaves about your feet” (Eliot, lines 5-7)). Eliot is aiming to create a very distinct scene, the end of the day paralleling perhaps the end of line in terms of the tone. In Eliot’s aim to fully emerge the reader in the setting, he writes, at times, in the second person: “Of withered leaves about your feet.” (Eliot, line 7) The rhyming sequence is inconsistent, which lends itself to the whimsical style in which Eliot is known for writing. The inconsistent rhythm works to the same effect. Visually, the lighting of the lamps provides contrast between that which is light and that which is dark, somehow increasing the gloom with the shadows. As this is the evening, it is inevitable that is will be followed by a sort of resurrection in the morning, showing that to every end and to every death, the light of life will still return. Considering that “Prelude I” is part of a much larger entity, it is possible that this particular poem is creating the setting that will be added onto or contrasted later in Eliot’s work.
ReplyDelete“Prelude II” predictively serves as the resurrection scene that corresponds with “Prelude I.” The emptiness of the street is contrasted with the sudden flood of people that enter the street “With all its muddy feet that press/To early coffee-stands.” (Eliot, lines 3-4) Serving as the counterpart of “Prelude I,” it is life-giving, rejuvenating, and exciting as opposed to the gloom and loneliness in “Prelude I.” “Prelude III” serves as a further contrast between all that is dark, evil, and gloomy and the redemption and rebirth that is associated with the morning. “You dozed, and watched the night revealing/The thousand sordid images/Of which your soul was constituted,” (Eliot, lines 3-5) illustrates the association between the darkness of the night to the darkness of human nature. As Eliot is associating the “sordid thoughts” with darkness, night also is symbolic of secrecy and guilt, hiding that which should not be seen. The coming morning, however, is associated with redemption. “And when all the world came back/And the light crept up between the shutters/And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,/You had such a vision of the street/As the street hardly understands;/Sitting along the bed’s edge, where/You curled the papers from your hair,/Or clasped the yellow soles of feet/In the palms of both soiled hands,” (Eliot, lines 7-15) echoes a contemplative redemption, basking the revealing light of the morning. The soul is again compared to the light and dark of the day in “Prelude IV”: “His soul stretched tight across the skies/That fade behind a city block.” (Eliot, Lines 1-2) The sky is an analogy for the human soul and intention. The street itself is a metaphor for life. “I am moved by fancies that are curled/Around these images, and cling:/The notion of some infinitely gentle/Infinitely suffering thing.” (Eliot, lines 11-14) Thus is the essence of life- both gentle and suffering.
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ReplyDeleteThe poem “The Winter Evening Settles Down” is describing a calm winter evening. Through the poem starting from the beginning it is very descriptive and sets a clear image in the readers head of what is happening. The second line shows there is a smell of steak throughout the streets and line three shoes its around dinner time six o’clock. The fourth line shows how there is not a lot of work in the city. The fifth line describes the strong weather. Sixth and the seventh line show he environment and the leaves are dying. Line eight shows how there are newspapers left behind and the parking lot is empty implying that people went home. Line nine talks about the rain again and line ten is giving the feeling that the setting is ridged. Line eleven and twelve talk about an old horse cab walking along the street and thirteen with lightened lamps along the streets.
The following preludes written by T.S. Elliot are very clear t imagine and understand. He writes about different times during the day. "The morning comes to consciousness"(line 1) in prelude two and its obliviously talking about the morning. "You dozed, and watched the night revealing" (line 3) in prelude three and its talking about the night being watched. "His soul stretched right across the skies" (line 1) this shows that it was during the day time and I imagine a light blue sky in prelude four. I like the way he puts his writings in perspective and how different actions make you feel different emotions.
Delete“The winter evening settles down” provides a description of a gloomy, rainy evening in a dirty, perhaps somewhat impoverished, urban neighborhood. Not much is going on in this poem; it is more a static description of a certain place at a certain time than the telling of a story or a series of events. Eliot describes this neighborhood in beautiful detail. He begins by describing the smell of the place; steaks are cooking in the houses, and their meaty aroma pervades the streets. He makes it clear that this neighborhood is very dirty, mentioning, “smoky days,” (line 4) “grimy scraps of withered leaves,” (lines 5-6) and “newspapers from vacant lots.” (line 7) He sets a gloomy scene as well, describing the rain that begins to fall, and the dereliction made apparent by “broken blinds and chimney pots.” Most of all, though, he sets a very, very still mood. This poem conjures up images of empty streets and quiet evenings, beginning with Eliot’s assertion that this is one of those “burnt-out ends of smoky days.” (line 3) The only thing happening here, aside from a lone horse stamping and snorting at the corner, is the rain and wind, swirling the leaves around your feet, blowing around the newspapers, and pitter-pattering on the chimneys.
ReplyDeleteIn the following three preludes, Eliot gradually but steadily enlivens the mood of the poem. The neighborhood slowly wakes up; it smells of stale beer. Again, Eliot emphasizes the squalor and weariness of this place. The inhabitants of the neighborhood begin their morning, with “muddy feet that press to early coffee stands,” (line 5) and he describes “all the hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms.” (lines 9-10) Then, in the third prelude, the voice of the poem changes; rather than being an impersonal description of the neighborhood, it is now addressing one of the neighborhood’s citizens individually, as he engages in a moment of introspection. Finally, in the fourth prelude, Eliot is still speaking about this person, but now in the third person, and is now directly addressing the reader. He somewhat explicitly breaks the “fourth wall” in this prelude; after briefly elaborating on the hardships of the subject’s life, he openly admits his inspiration in writing this poem, saying, “I am moved by fancies that are curled around these images, and cling: the notion of some infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing.”
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