Catching up With Choices

T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" are dramatic monologues. Both of these speakers are very different, yet the fact that they are portrayed through dramatic monologues seems to instantly make them seem vain. In fact both of them are quite vain, but in different ways, and they both also have their unique, quirks. J. Alfred Prufrock is an interesting character indeed, in all aspects of life he simply fails, he cannot seem to accomplish anything and he laments upon the past thinking about what he did wrong and what he could have done. Prufrock is indeed vain, he believes that if he were younger he would be able to accomplish the things that he couldn't not when he was younger, he keeps going back to the idea that his younger self could accomplish so much more. He is vain to believe that with youth he could accomplish things he has already failed at. However the Duke is vain in a completely different way, he needs things to be centered around him, he needs to be in control, for when he looses control, he looses control. The Duke thinks he is the be all to end all, that he is the center of everything, and it needs to be maintained this way for him to remain sane. All of life around the Duke is feeding his vanity. The Dukes vanity causes him to act to stay in control of things, Prufrocks vanity causes him to simply wish.