The psychological effect that the city environment has on both characters and authors can be seen in Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and in The Wasteland by TSElliot. The lack of unity in Elliot's lyrics has led critics to believe that the writing is too fragmented: My nerves are shot tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Talk to me. Why don't you ever talk? Speak. What are you thinking? What thought? What. I never know what you're thinking. Think. (TWL: 110) However, as Gareth Reeves suggests in the book TSElliot: The Waste Land "unprecedented conditions of chaos and disintegration require unprecedented methods of poetic fragmentation" (16). Critics, who believed the poem to be formless, may have overlooked the fact that Elliot had purposely designed the poem as such. «Tonight my nerves are shot. Yes bad' sounds like spoken English, which is not always spoken in complete sentences. Added to this is the fact that the person speaking seems so nervous that he can't bear to be alone in case his thoughts reveal the truth. (Selby,106) It is as if the stress of the city has finally spilled over into the speaker's thoughts, making the speaker feel the need to self-reassure. Point one: 2-vThe modernist perception of a person produced by a place fits Virginia Wolfe's Mrs. Dalloway perfectly. The book's namesake is often described as a person framed by her emotions, worrying about how "something terrible was about to happen" (Woolf, 1). Although the city allowed more freedom, such as the ability to wander unescorted, being in a foreign environment that Clarissa was involved in had a psychological effect. In comparison, Mr. Dalloway is outwardly seen as a strong character. While Richard is good at maintaining control, he has his problems. Even with h......middle of paper......novels. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. PrintReeves, The Waste Land by GTSEliot. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Print.Ried, S. Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993. PrintRoe,S. Sellers, S. The Cambridge Companion to:Virginia Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. PrintSelby,NTSEliot: The Waste Land: a readers guide to essential criticism.Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. Print.Wallace, J. Beginning Modernism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Print "The Waste Land." 1922. Modernism: An Anthology (Blackwell's Anthologies). Ed. Lawrence Rainey. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005. 123-42. Print.Willson, R. “Is There Hope in the Waste Land?” Critical essays on: The Waste Land. Essex: Longman, 1998. 82-93. Print.Woolf, V. Mrs. Dalloway. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2003. Print.
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