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T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
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Paralysis, the incapability to act, has been a key element of many famous literary characters. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the paragon of paralysis, unable to sort through his thoughts, Hamlet only makes one decisive action, at the end of the play. T.S Elliot’s transfers Hamlets’ paralysis in his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The name Elliot chose for this indecisive, timid man epitomizes his character as well as his flaws. J. Alfred Prufrock needs this ranting monologue in order for him to understand the severity of his paralysis and fear of women and society.
Elliot’s poetry is a melting pot of literary allusions and references. The first lines are directly quoted from Dante’s Inferno. Prufrock, as can be interpreted from these lines, is confined to what he feels is hell. The images of the city where Prufrock lives are dark and empty, the night sky looks "Like a patient etherized upon a table" (3), while down below barren "half-deserted streets" (4) reveal "one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants" (6-7). All of these images reflect some part of Prufrock’s personality. The “etherized patient” reflects his inability to act while the images of the city depict Prufrock’s loneliness.
The poem then switches to “the yellow fog.” The yellow fog seems to be associated with an animal, or perhaps Prufrock, as it rubs its back upon the window panes (15) … rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes (16)”. Unable to enter “the room where women come and go (13)”, instead, the animal lingers outside. Prufrock, for someone reason, is avoiding entering the room although he desires to enter.
Images and allusions are not the only features of “Prufrock”. The rhythm of the lines is deliberately irregular. Most of the time, Elliot...
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...ousness. Prufrock relates the women in his society to beautiful, vain mermaids who only sing to each other. The concluding stanzas of the poem display his unattainable and frustrated desire for all women. To him, he believes, they are inaccessible. Prufrock dreams about the mermaids until “human voices” wake him and he drowns deeper into his watery hell.
J. Alfred Prufrock is a man who has chosen to live in a world where only things he believes are true. He believes that there will be time for him to be with society, the women that he desires will all ignore him and instead speak of men that are young, tough and strong. Throughout the poem, Prufrock is ultimately searching for the meaning of his existence. The plethora of allusion that Elliot utilizes in this poem help to unravel the undermining message and thoroughly understand Prufrock’s paralysis.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is about a timid and downcast man in search of meaning, of love, and in search of something to break from the dullness and superficiality which he feels his life to be. Eliot lets us into Prufrock's world for an evening, and traces his progression of emotion from timidity, and, ultimately, to despair of life. He searches for meaning and acceptance by the love of a woman, but falls miserably because of his lack of self-assurance. Prufrock is a man for whom, it seems, everything goes wrong, and for whom there are no happy allowances. The emptiness and shallowness of Prufrock's "universe" and of Prufrock himself are evident from the very beginning of the poem. He cannot find it in himself to tell the woman what he really feels, and when he tries to tell her, it comes out in a mess. At the end of the poem, he realizes that he has no big role in life.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. 369-372. Print.
"(10) which is never identified, asked, or answered in the poem. This "question" is somehow associated with his social status, but both its ambiguity and Prufrock's denial to even ask "What is it? " (11) gives some insight into his state of internal turmoil. Prufrock's dissatisfaction with his personal appearance is evidence of an underlying lack of self-confidence. Not only is he unhappy with the way he looks, having "to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet," but he is constantly afraid of what others will have to say about him.
Prufrocks next thoughts tell of his old age and his lack of will to say what is on his mind. He mentions his bald spot in his hair and his thin arms and legs. This suggests that he knows he is growing old, and therefore contradicts what he had mentioned earlier in the poem about having plenty of time. Throughout the poem he is indecisive and somewhat aloof from the self-involved group of women. One part of him would like to startle them out of their frustratingly polite conversations and express his love for her, but to accomplish this he would have to risk disturbing their ?universe? and being rejected. He also mentions ?sprawling on a pin?, as though he pictures himself being pinned in place and viciously analyzed like that of an insect being literally pinned in place. The latter part of the poem captures his sense of overwhelming lack of willpower for failing to act daringly, not only at that tea party, but throughout his life.
The first half of the poem creates a sense of place. The narrator invites us to go “through certain half-deserted streets” on an evening he has just compared to an unconscious patient (4). To think of an evening as a corpselike event is disturbing, but effective in that the daytime is the time of the living, and the night time is the time of the dead. He is anxious and apprehensive, and evokes a sense of debauchery and shadows. Lines 15-22 compare the night’s fog to the actions of a typical cat, making the reader sense the mystery of a dark, foggy night in a familiar, tangible way. One might suppose that “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo” refers to a room in a brothel, where the seedy women for hire talk about elevated art between Johns (13). The narrator creates a tension in the image of dark deserted streets and shady activities in the dark.
T.S. Eliot, a notable twentieth century poet, wrote often about the modern man and his incapacity to make decisive movements. In his work entitled, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'; he continues this theme allowing the reader to view the world as he sees it, a world of isolation and fear strangling the will of the modern man. The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante's Inferno, an allusion to Dante's character who speaks from Hell only because he believes that the listener can not return to earth and thereby is impotent to act on the knowledge of his conversation. In his work, Eliot uses this quotation to foreshadow the idea that his character, Prufrock, is also trapped in a world he can not escape, the world where his own thoughts and feelings incapacitate and isolate him.
Handler 356-7. " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century (Williams 49). It is certainly not a love song like any that has been written before. The second and third lines shock the reader because of their unusual imagery that would be out of place in a traditional love poem, describing the setting sunlit sky as looking "like a patient etherised upon a table" (Eliot 3). This "etherised" outside world is the key to understanding all of Prufrock's views.
Elliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 3rd ed. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1997. 781-785.
Eliot, T. S. "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. F. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2006. 2289-293. Print.
Eliot and Kafka characterize their respective characters as having negative self-images, a prior lack of success, and as being fundamentally lonely. Prufrock views himself as undesirable, and his self-image seems to grow worse with age. While Prufrock has the chance early on to make something of his life, he sits in a room, presumably one in which there is a display of artwork, and “the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” (ll. 13-14). Prufrock goes by unnoticed next to what could be the beautiful works of Michelangelo. It can especially be presumed that he feels inadequate next to the Statue of David, a sculpture for which Michelangelo is famous. As time goes on, his feelings of inadequacy increase when he begins to fear what others will think of his aged appearance, for “They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’” and “They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’” (ll. 41, 44). Prufrock’s lack of self-confid...
In the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Eliot uses a man named Prufrock to describe the uncertainties in life and how they affect a person’s views. Prufrock does not have the confidence to give or receive love. There is an equal amount of unhappiness to the concept of time and space. He is unsatisfied with life and with the decision to think rather than act.
Alfred Prufrock, ample details about the settings are described to reflect the speaker’s emotions. For instance, the first stanza paints the scene that an innocent and unconfident middle age man hesitates to propose to a woman. For one thing, the speaker of the poem is afraid that time will go wasted. On the other side, he feels powerless to the reality. Apparently, Eliot directly tells the reader the internal conflict of the speaker of the poem, who is greedy of love but fears for the responsibility that comes with it. What this setting in the poem reflects is the emptiness and weakness of folks in modern
Prufrock’s social world is initially revealed as he takes the reader on a journey. Through the lines 1-36, the reader travels with Prufrock through the modern city and its streets as we experience Prufrock’s life and explore his surroundings through his eyes. From the very beginning, the city is portrayed as bleak and empty with no signs of happiness. The setting as Prufrock walks through the street appears to be polluted, dirty, and run-down, as if it is the cheap side of town, giving the feeling of it being lifeless, still, eerie, sleepy and unconscious. Eliot uses imagery, from the skyline to half-deserted streets, to cheap hotels to sawdust restaurants to demonstrate the loneliness and alienation the city possesses. The city Prufrock resides in is, in a way, a shadow of how he is as a person, and the images of the city speak to some part of his personality. Just as the skyline is described as “a patient etherised upon a table” (3), it foreshadows and hints that Prufrock has an...
The poem begins by suggesting that Mr. Prufrock is mentally disassociated with society. Mr. Prufrock, addressing the audience or some imaginary confidante, proposes the mental journey commence "When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised [sic] upon a table" (ll. 2-3). The lines evoke images of drug induced, altered realities. He follows by recommending visits to "one-night cheap hotels" (l. 6) and "sawdust restaurants" (l. 7). The references infer that the locations are not the speaker's normal environments and are part of fantasy environments. In lines 15 through 22, the speaker credits the smog with feline characteristics. He further states "Though I have seen my head [...] brought in upon a platter..." (l. 81). Although it is a biblical reference to the decapitation of John the Baptist, the statement is indicative of an active fantasy life. He admits to having heard mermaids sing and speaks of life on a beach. He creates the fanta...
Prufrock, the narrator of the poem, is a middle-aged man who is living a life void of meaning and purpose. His thoughts are depressing as he mulls over his dull, uneventful life. One of his most crippling traits is cowardice. He's v...