Modernism Is Both Really Cool and Impossible

I have a 1500 word literary analysis due Friday and I haven't even started mapping out ideas, because I'm lazy and writing is hard.

I decided to compare and contrast TS Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and William Faulkner's "Barn Burning", since they're both sort of cobbled into the vast and varied artistic movement that is Modernism, and I really enjoy them both. The problem is that Modernism, at least as we've studied it, is intentionally complex and difficult to interpret, with Eliot especially. He drew inspiration and influence from the Metaphysical poets: seriously. Fucking Metaphysical poets.

Ugh, it's so hard. I want to be a literature student, but I don't want this, persay. I don't know. I feel like your late teens/early twenties is way too early to be making decisions about what you want to do for the rest of your life. Hell, I was seventeen when I started college this year. Seventeen! And I'm almost a year ahead in credits, so I have even less time to make up my mind.

Not to mention Eliot's poem totally has an atmosphere of crushing existentialism, which is not helping focus on writing instead of my impending doom. Great.

Are any of you guys really good at interpreting Modernist literature? Looking for a way to spend the afternoon that is only mildly interesting? Hit me up! We can discuss, I don't know, color imagery or some shit. I'm grasping at straws, here.
March 3rd, 2015 at 11:18pm