T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Journey of the Magi" reveal some of the major concerns of their early 20th century Modernist context. Through continuous use of imagery, ambiguity, repetition, allusions and purposeful contortion of lines and sentences, Eliot demonstrates the importance of the inner self, innovation, religious questioning, an uninviting and bleak society and a flaunting of conventions, themes commonly associated with Modernism and the period after WWI. …showed first 75 words of 1011 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1011 total…were spurred on by the trauma of World War I, the development of the metropolis and rapid industrialisation. They incorporate the ideas of social collapse, gloom, a search for individual values, a breakdown of communications in the empty city and a re-evaluation of conventional social etiquette, beliefs and poetic structure. However, their inclusion is often only obtainable from oblique Modernist allusions and paradoxes, making a full understanding of the poem difficult and dependent upon opinion.