Although they come from different eras and from the minds of different authors, the protagonists of "The Pilgrimage of Child Harold" by Byron, "The Child Roland to the Dark Tower" by Browning , and T. S. Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” are all cavalier in their own way. We can go even further: ultimately they are all the same man. Childe Harold and Byron's narrator, Childe Roland and J. Alfred Prufrock are all tortured men on some kind of quest; each of them is haunted by thoughts of their past. Their goals overlap and merge with each other; every man finds himself hopeless, faced with his own doubts, and seeks a relief he doesn't believe in. And while their methods are certainly different, each of them ultimately self-destructs. In the context of their respective eras, each hero ends up in a tragic dead end; these poems capture the moments before reaching it, captured in small seconds that tend toward an end. “In a minute there is time,” Prufrock says, “for decisions and revisions that a minute will undo” (47-8). His "love song" embraces the minutes he's too scared to undo. The child Harold wanders sadly and does not take into account the time; and Childe Roland remains standing, remembering his past, paralyzed in "a moment [that] brought the pain of the years to its knees" (198). These men summarize their destinies in matters of simple moments and continue to fulfill them. If their struggles and their responses seem to merge as one, perhaps it is because the authors who created them strove, each in his or her time, to overcome the same problems – problems of worry, of doubt, of fleeting success and lasting regrets – looking back on the past. the works come before them and then find relief in an imaginary knight on a real quest. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayWhen Childe Harold begins his quest he is already tired, having spent his days indulging in pleasures that have grown stale. The opportunity to live in limitless hedonism might initially seem like a blessing, but for Harold it has become a curse. His well-fed appetite becomes “worse than adversity,” perhaps because it ultimately leads him to seek adversity as others would enjoy it, and the possibilities of adversity then become limitless (Canto I, 33). The repetition of the vowel sound “er,” first for worse and then for adversity, subtly links the two words together, so that when the reader reads “adversity,” they hear a faint echo of “worse” still resonant. As well as being euphonious, this effect highlights the impact of the "worst" as it is almost as if we hear it twice - and the transportive power of the word in this verse suggests, in its own way, the effect that this "adversity" driven from pleasure it will make us feel better. have on Harold's life. It is worse than conventional oppression because, like “worst,” it extends its hold to repeat itself without limits. “Addicted to pleasure,” Harold actively seeks his opposite; he “almost desired the pain, / and even the change of scene sought the shadows below” (I 54-5). The word “junkie” gives a succinct image of Harold's torpor as he floats from place to place with little clarity or any real desire to do so. And the assertion that Harold would seek out the underworld itself—like the hellish landscape Roland faces, or the internal torment Prufrock endures—simply for new scenery is effective for its shock value. Yet Byron's claims that Harold (who might well have been called Byron, by the poet's later admission) fled his home simply for aexcess of pleasure are dubious at best, especially considering that this comes right after a stanza describing Harold's life (or, once again, Byron's lost love. Having “sighed with many, though he loved but one , / And that beloved, alas! could ever be his" (I, 39-40). In what is probably a reference to the doomed relationship between Byron and his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, here Byron reveals that Harold has surely known something other than fun. He has known loss, perhaps the greatest pain of all, and it has driven him to wander the world in search of nothingness. Byron's narrator alter ego welcomes aimlessness of the ocean at the beginning of III, just before diving back into Harold's saga: Once more upon the waters! And the waves bind beneath me like a steed that knows its rider. Welcome to their roar! Swift be their guide, wherever it leads! (III, 10-13) The multiple exclamation points and energetic rhythm give the verses a sense of reckless euphoria that is perhaps natural for someone who is willing to entrust his destiny to the wild waters of the ocean. Byron's narrator has just emerged from a melancholy reverie about his distant daughter, Ada (Byron's daughter was called Augusta Ada), in which he hopes against hope to see her again. Suddenly awakened, he immediately immerses himself in the danger and uncertainty that surrounds him, almost as a kind of encouraged antidote to the private loss he suffers. When Byron officially returns to Harold a few stanzas later, he describes the changes that Harold's quest has brought about in him: He, who has grown old in this world of woe, By deeds, not by years, penetrating the depths of life, Thus which is no wonder awaits him. (III 37-9)This is Harold's destiny, the one he has chosen for himself. He “pierced” life like a warrior, but he has no passion for it. He wanders from one end to the other, not caring what his true final end is. He is, after all, none other than the Byronic hero, that emblem of romance who, so consumed by the ferocious emotions and anguish of life, barely wallows outside it but never escapes it. While certainly different from Harold's background, Childe Roland's past has a similar feel. -destructive effect on him. Unlike Harold, Roland (whose name, curiously, is an almost anagrammatic inversion of the name "Harold") had less than his share of pleasure, a distinction that may have always been intentional on Browning's part. Perhaps Roland, Harold's backward cousin/brother, is destined to pay for the numerous visits to the “long labyrinth of sin” for which Harold never atoned (I, 37). Through Roland's internal monologue it is revealed that he was once part of a brave company and watched them belittle one friend at a time. The memory of his fallen comrades returns to Roland repeatedly on this final journey, ringing in his ears like an immutable destiny, most forcefully towards the end of the poem, when Roland finally faces the Dark Tower. Haven't you heard? When the noise was everywhere! its ringing increased like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers, my peers: How such was strong, and such was bold, and such was fortunate, Yet each of the old men was lost, lost! a moment put an end to the pain of the years. (193-8) It is important to note that we do not know where this sound actually comes from, or whether the sound is real. Roland gives no indication that a bell or anything similar is actually ringing; although this is always possible, it is not clearly stated. Yet for him the idea of ​​not hearing the noise is unfathomable, even ridiculous:“Don't hear?” he says. “When the noise was everywhere!” This is his defensive anticipation of a question that has not been asked, and cannot be asked since he is completely alone, yet he instinctively feels that someone, somewhere, is insulting him by suggesting that he cannot hear this incredible sound. His vehement but unsupported explanation that “the noise was everywhere!” suggests that on some level it is beyond reason. In all likelihood the origin of the noise is in Roland's tortured mind, where the names of his companions echo incessantly. Remember only their good qualities: one was strong, another brave, and a third, oddly enough, was "lucky"; this is strange since all of these men have clearly met sad ends, to the point that Roland can no longer turn to their memories for comfort. At one point early in the poem, when he tries to find strength in the thoughts of his friends, he finds himself overwhelmed by visions of tragedy and death. “This present is better than a past like this;” he says. “I therefore return to my dark path again!” (103-4) The fact that he then remembers some as “lucky” is deeply disturbing; a possible explanation is that, amazed by the tolling of the imaginary bells, Roland simply lost his mind at this point. Perhaps he decides, unconsciously or not, to revisit the past – delude himself, if necessary – to make it bearable and find the comfort he needs at this final meeting point. So all men were brave, all were strong, and all were lucky in some way. Another logic, perhaps even more disturbing, is that Roland is lucid when he considers someone lucky and, given the horror he now faces, considers someone who is already dead lucky. If this were the case, then his attitude at the beginning of the poem would make deplorable sense; like Harold's narrator, who lets the ocean waves take him where they will, Roland has long since stopped caring where his journey ends. When directed towards poetry by a "white-haired cripple" (2) whom Roland suspects of dishonesty, he follows the man's directions not out of trust but out of weary indifference: .... Yet with acquiescence I turned as he had indicated : nor pride, nor the hope that is rekindled at the end described, as much as the joy that some end may be. (15-18)He speaks of the “reviving” of hope, conjuring an image of hope as a light or flame that contrasts sharply with the “darkening path” to which he later returns (104). Above all he does not want the end, but any end or, as he says, "some" end. Having "suffered so long in this quest" (37), feeling old with "hope diminished" (20-21), his only desire now is to find the failure that found his friends, but also to feel worthy of it . With a thought that strongly anticipates J. Alfred Prufrock's cries of “Did I dare? and: "Do I have the courage?" (38), Roland's last concern is: "And all the doubt was now: should I be fit?" (42)The difference between Roland and Prufrock, as we will soon see, is that Roland meets his end in the hope of being fit; Prufrock approaches his situation still convinced that it is not. Roland's raising his snail's horn and lunging forward might seem anti-Victorian in its boldness and daring, but for Browning, who defined himself by flaunting codes of tact, this end is exactly what we would expect.J. Alfred Prufrock doesn't need a Dark Tower to reveal his future; he discovered this a long time ago. The only quest he undertakes is that of memory, repentant revision and unwanted thought. In this case, however, it is extremely difficult to precisely define what motivates him in his past or, on a more levelelementary, also define what is in his past. Time is treated very ambiguously in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the line between memory and imagination is often deliberately blurred. All we have to do is deduce a life told by omission; forced to follow Prufrock's thinking, we necessarily focus not on what he did, but on what he did not do. In addition to this, we also look at what he could have done, what he could have done (but will never do). So when Prufrock asks, Would it have been worth it, To have closed the matter with a smile, To have compressed the universe into a ball, to roll it towards an overwhelming question, to say, "I am Lazarus, I am from the dead , I'll come back to tell you everything, I'll tell you everything" - (90-5). never done this: never rolled the universe into a ball, never rolled it towards some overwhelming question. And when she continues with the condition that if she did, it could only happen if one, placing a pillow near her head, were to say, "That's not what I meant at all. That's not what I meant at all." (96-8)He confides to us his reasoning, the fears that held him back. At the same time Prufrock attempts to justify his choice – as, indeed, the whole poem is in a sense justification – when he suggests that attacking life as he might have actually been something insensitive, something superficial and aggressive. He identifies facing life and love with "biting into the matter with a smile", suggesting with the word "bite" a sort of casual ferocity, and with "smile" an inappropriate lightness. The question of whether Prufrock should have lived life, lived life more fully – as Prince Hamlet says, and not simply “a servant” – is clearly a question that torments him to the extreme (111-12). Throughout his life he nurtures a sort of reverence that perhaps only the truly shy understand, because only they are willing to sacrifice their lives for his indestructible ideal. So for Prufrock, whose will to live is stronger than anyone else's but whose fear grows in direct correlation, addressing the issue with a smile is both something he desires and something he scoffs at. If he had been brave enough to “force the moment into his crisis,” as he said earlier, he would no doubt have considered the idea differently (80). But because it is not bold enough, it suggests that such boldness is somehow distasteful and generally useless. Because even if he were bold – even if he found his revelation and spread it – he has a sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, would still contradict him. Much like the imaginary naysayers whom Roland despises with his “everywhere sound,” Prufrock imagines “one” who will tell him that he is wrong – who “should say:/ “That's not so at all,/ That's not what I think.” meant at all'” (109-110). It is easier for Prufrock to assume that any effort he makes would be rejected by someone stronger, and the fear of this misfortune is enough to keep him from trying, even though deep down he knows that the fact of needing proof is in itself proof that he can't believe it. Secretly realizes that convincing yourself is an impossible task, and the very act of trying means you can't be convinced. In his own way, then, Prufrock is as self-destructive as Harold, Byron, or Roland; within the modernist perspective, particularly in its anti-romantic Eliot subset, self-destruction has come to mean something different at this point. Prufrock's fate is his choice, but at the same time it is the ultimate punishment. Trapped in his private torment, like Montefeltro in the quotation from Dante's Inferno that precedes the poem, Prufrockhe confesses his regret only because he knows it will lead nowhere, because just as he tries to convince only himself, he tries to confess only to himself. “'Do I dare?'” he asks, “and: 'do I dare?'” (38) The answer, of course, is no; the consuming torture of his situation is that, cursed with a repressed perspective on his own pain, Prufrock knows exactly what he has suffered and exactly what he will suffer. Yet he does nothing, because acknowledging his paralysis is the only indulgence he will allow himself. So his love song, while full of hidden sadness that he can't quite suppress, is at least designed to be more like an anti-love song, a song of lost love. She cries emotions that she doesn't allow herself. And so, like Childe Harold, “aged in this world of woe” (III 37), and like Childe Roland, whose hope “shrank to a ghost unable to cope/With that a stubborn joy that success would bring” ( 21-2), Prufrock grows old – becomes an old man who lives his whole life in one day, so that each day becomes a whole lifetime of waste. Because I've known them all before, I've known them all: I've known the evenings, the mornings, the afternoons, I've measured my life with coffee spoons, I know the voices that die with a dying fall under the music of another room . (49-53)These lines are full of repetition, repetition that stumbles and falls over itself to underline how unfairly this life has already been lived. Prufrock has “known them all,” “he has known them all” [just as Roland who, defiantly facing the hills that frame his final end, says that “I have seen them and known them all” (202)] and everything was measured with the trivial and minute unit of a teaspoon. The coffee spoon evokes at the same time the fatigue of daily life and, with its smallness, the futility of measuring it; also connotes morning, right after Prufrock actually said “morning” in the previous line. “Dying” echoes in the fourth line as “worse” for Childe Harold, and as Childe Roland's fallen friends: a sad and compelling idea that cannot be erased. It is under the pressure of this planned future that Prufrock feels himself growing old: "I grow old... I grow old.../ I'll wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled up" (120-1), clinging again to daytime practicalities with a self-contained terror. Prufrock is like Roland, “silent as despair” as he turns from the cripple toward the Dark Tower (43). He is like Harold, who has become “secure in icy coldness” (III 82), so cut off from his fellow men that he has nothing left to prove… So no wonder awaits him; nor below can love, or pain, fame, ambition, conflict, re-cut his heart with the sharp knife of silent, keen resistance: can he tell why thought seeks refuge in lonely caves, yet full of airy images, and forms that still dwell intact, though old, in the haunted cell of the soul (III 40-45). The last words in particular - "the haunted cell of the soul" - are painfully accurate for Prufrock, who is unique in that unlike Harold and Roland, he has nothing - and, therefore, everything... to regret. He is haunted not by a forbidden love or a group of lost men, but simply by nothing. You could say it's about lost love, but only because it's so lost, completely, that it never happened. Prufrock dreams that mermaids sing, but can't believe they are within his reach. “I don't think,” he says, “that they'll sing to me” (125). Thus, while Harold rides the waves and Roland passes through the flames, Prufrock “lingers in the chambers of the sea” and eventually drowns (129). Although every knight and every author fights more or less the same problem, it is only Byron, the first – who claims.