Afternoons and Coffeespoons Essay Example

name of T.S. Eliot as a symbol and prophet of Hamlet phenomenon common among the twentieth century people.

The style of the song is a style of self-reference and stream of consciousness we see in Eliot’s `The Song of Love` as well. That’s why it sounds quite incoherent at the first reading. In fact, the narrator of the poem is its hero indeed. So, the lyrics appear to be maximally intimate and frank in its attempt to figure out what are `moments of being` and what are `moments of non-being` (Virginia Wolf’s terms). The refrain `Someday I'll have a disappearing hairline/Someday I'll wear pyjamas in the daytime` shows the somber realty the hero is predicting to himself in future. And it sounds like a resignation…

2. Images and Metaphors

Roberts as well as his inspiring predecessor is free to use very striking and unusual images to capture the reader’s attention and to make all the hues of meaning to be seen and at the same time to be interpreted freely. The author doesn’t give general information about the hero. All we know is that the one is concerned about `the rattle in his bronchi`, his thinning hair, his doctor’s prescriptions and wearing pyjamas all day. We can call him a modern Prufrock parodied by Brad Roberts. His problem is not about the inability to speak of feelings to a woman he loves (as in the case of Eliot’s Prufrock) but rather about his bronchi. His figure is tragic in some way but his weakness is mocked at. The mockery is especially strong in paraphrasing T.S. Eliot’s lines:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do

I dare?"

What was Prufrock’s present (bolding head and dull afternoons) now it going to be the future for Robert’s hero which doesn’t ask himself any ontological questions and only satirically regrets about his bad test results.

Communication

But what is Brad Roberts trying to say by his `hero` with bad lungs and bolding head? His claim is similar to Eliot’s: people are weak to do something about their lives. They are simply afraid to make decisions for themselves and to reveal the truth to others. Isn’t it a problem of our time too (or the dilemma of all times)? Aren’t we afraid of getting old and becoming someone like `wearing pyjamas in the daytime` and `following the prescription` people? But somehow this fear doesn’t change anything? We still meet the same yellow (the colour of gloom) afternoons `measured out with coffeespoons` and T.S. Eliot existential tournaments (our life is `a play by Sartre` according to Roberts) and disillusionments of soul.