Modernism
...ink of him. I think in saying this about his bald spot he puts himself down on a level where the readers can relate to him. Before modernism writing, authors would make it so that readers could rarely relate to the main character because the main character wouldn’t have any problems that everyday people could relate to. I hear about so many men who are worried as they grow older about losing their hair, and I see so many ads for hair growth for men. This worry that the speaker shares is one that everyman can relate to at some point in their lives. Admitting his fear of people making comments, like “How his hair is growing thin! (1027)”, shows that he is not a ‘hero’ who doesn’t care what people think about him because he has it all together. Instead, he is a man who “(is) afraid (1028)”, who is “grow(ing) old (1029)”, and who is worried about the “bald spot in the middle of [his] head (1027)”. He is just a regular guy, no one special. This is how many modernism writers wanted to present their main characters so that people would be able to relate to them better. Descriptive words fill this poem as Eliot tries to convey to the readers how the speaker in the poem is feeling rather then just coming right out and saying how he feels. He says “I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floor of silent seas (1028)”. Eliot’s use of the crab imagery conveys his feelings of abandonment, loneliness and exploitation, similar to a solitary crab whose life consists of exploitation by someone as bait or dinner. This was another idea that was introduced by modernism. The idea of conveying things about who the person is and how they are feeling by using images and descripti...