Fairy Tales

I'll post some pictures tonight of myself. I am fascinated by them for some reason.

Last night, I had to write a paper for my Intro Lit class of what a certain poem meant to us. It was a formalist view, so we had to pick just a few lines from the 131 line poem and reflect on it. T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

If you have not read ot, which you probably have not, you certainly should.

I chose the last eight lines of the poem:

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. (ll. 124-131)

I wrote about how happy endings are those of only fairy tales, how love is dedead, and we don't always get what we want, that the outcomes are not always pretty with silver linings and a light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes, there is just a brick wall, or a cliff.

When I reread it, I was kind of sad. It was a very cynical paper, but true all the same. I am very intersted in what the Prof. has to say about it, because most people are writing about how you shouldn't regret anything, or something about religion, or how women are not things. ANd here I am writing a ridiculously cynical paper on love. My title was 'Fairy Tales: This is Not a LOve Story, There Are No Happy Endings'