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The Remarkably Unromantic “Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock” In the poem “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot, the narrator sees women “Talking of Michelangelo”, which implies a romantic connotation that the story unmistakably will not ensue (Prufrock). This line of the poem has a noteworthy impact on not only the theme, but the tone of the poem. Moreover this poem is as far from a love song as conceivable, we know this since the poem is an example of Modernism. Modernism is mostly defined as a work that rejects traditional storylines, has an abstract or surreal setting, is pessimistic, has an unclear protagonist, and is not easily comprehended. Luis Alberto Lázaro Lafuente states that “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” …show more content…
The narrator has no confidence in himself and always expects things to end unsatisfactorily, therefore he never accomplishes the enormous task that he ponders the entire poem. The main character is completely incapable of normal human interaction, he never asks this monumental question in the story he mulls over the entire poem, because he chickens out, and has very little self esteem. “He knows he is not Prince Hamlet and he does not think the mermaids will sing to him. He knows that he can not make a decision(Lafuente).” An example of this is that the narrator is constantly obsessed with women and his supposed faults, such as baldness and growing old. “Eliot’s use of literary techniques portrays a man incapable of normal day-to-day life, constantly mulling over every action he takes, debilitated by this paralysis (Jaklitsch).” At the end of the poem, mermaids, also known as sirens, represent all of life's opportunities and Prufrock, as he stands on the shore as an observer until his imminent death (Laura). This connection to Modernism is the most obvious, since it is one of the defining characteristics of the poem and Modernism. The reason for this pessimism is because society was faced with the harsh realities of war, the belief that God if he …show more content…
Alfred Prufrock” is an excellent example of Modernism and you should think so too since it is pessimistic, has an abstract setting, and is not “dumbed down” to aide anyone’s comprehension. As previously stated the poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an example of Modernism since it is not easy to interpret, has an abstract setting, and is intensely pessimistic. As previously stated, this poem is extraordinarily unromantic, bewildering, and more pessimistic than a student at a Chemistry exam without a periodic table. The bulk of this poem is definitely a Modernist one and you the reader should without a doubt believe that fact. “In the room the women come and go (Prufrock).” As can be seen, the narrator believes he needs a woman to fill up the hole in his life, but only one thing can fill this hole and that is that his mindset needs to improve. The narrator is obsessed with women and tries to reassure himself that he has experienced life, but is extremely inactive with real women and that adds to the enormous pessimism of this
T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is inhabited by both a richly developed world and character and one is able to categorize the spaces in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to correspond to Prufrock’s mind. Eliot uses the architecture of the three locations described in the text to explore parts of Prufrock's mind in the Freudian categories of id, ego, and super-ego; the city that is described becomes the Ego, the room where he encounters women his Id and the imagined ocean spaces his Super Ego.
Eliot, Thomas Stearns. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. 3rd ed. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair. New York: Norton, 2003. 463-466.
The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock by T.S. Eliot is a striking poem that takes the form of a dramatic monologue. It is an internal dialogue and, because of this, there is a suggestion of something that is not said plainly and directly on the surface, a sort of underlying feeling put into words. At times it seems that it is really Prufrock’s subconscious mind speaking. However, over the course of the poem, Prufrock seems to be shining an almost pathetic light on himself. This is most clearly shown through his failure actually to succeed in his “love song” and acquire a lover, his allusions to Hamlet and fools, and his constant worry over what seem to be trivial anxieties.
This is the sort of characteristic that makes Alfred a tragic, doomed character. He will not find happiness until he finds self-assurance within himself. The repetition of words like vision and revision, shows his feelings of inadequacy in communicating with the people around him. The rhyme scheme Elliot uses in this poem depicts the disenchanted and confused mind of the narrator. The poem is written using a non-uniform meter and rhyme.
In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot reveals the silent insecurity of a man, for whom the passing of time indicates the loss of virility and confidence. Throughout the poem, Prufrock struggles with his fear of inadequacy, which surfaces socially, physically and romantically. The desire to ask some "overwhelming question," of the one he wants is outweighed by his diffidence, reinforcing his belief in his shortcomings. Ultimately, this poem is the internal soliloquy of someone who attempts to know what he wants and how to get it, but whose social paralysis and lack of self-assuredness prevents either of these possibilities.
T.S. Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” embodies many of the different feelings of American's during the Modernist movement. Prufrock was seen as the prototype of the modern man, it is through his character in this poem that T.S. Eliot shows how man felt insecure, how the new theories of psychology were changing the concept of the mind and how society was becoming more doubtful and indecisive and less of an action taking people. The film Till Human Voices Wake Us, uses Eliot's poem as a base to showcase these ideas and to show how dreams and the past can help shape a man. .
Written in two different literary periods “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” share various similarities with one another. While Browning can not be credited for inventing the dramatic monologue himself it was his fondness and skill for it that raised it to a highly sophisticated level. He also helped increase its popularity both with poets and the general public. His huge success with dramatic monologues served as inspiration for Eliot years later. Based on his work, Eliot was clearly influenced by the dramatic monologue style used by Browning. However, despite their similarities there are stark differences between the poems by Browning and Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” shows a clear movement away from the Victorian style found in “My Last Duchess” and goes towards Modernism.
Eliot’s use of metaphors and similes in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, are effective in that they take concrete, yet simple, ideas and parallel it to that of something rather organic. This, in essence, gives the elements of the poem authenticity in that it makes alive Eliot’s main themes through his creation of Prufrock’s character as a very complex, yet ordinary, man with a fragmented view of love, time, and life itself. From something as simple as love and relationships with women, to things more complex like death and decisions, Prufrock’s disconnection from the modern world is elevated through Eliot’s literary elements. Through his comparison to seemingly attainable ideas and his use of metaphors and similes, Eliot highlights Prufrock’s fragmented character and core internal dilemmas.
T.S. Eliot 's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, published in 1915, is a prime sample of Modernist literature: the reader must tease out and untangle its central themes in order to fathom what exactly it is about. But we 'll still never be totally sure - this is what makes Eliot 's writing style so unique and so highly regarded. The Modernist writers, with their predilection for the abstract, thrived on leaving their audiences in a state of confusion, as a means of mirroring the distress caused by the looming threat of destruction and war in the early twentieth century. It could be said that all writers rely on metaphor as they can be crucial to creative expression, but Eliot avoids convention in that instead of creating understanding for
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” draws attention to the idea that time is of the essence. On the surface, Prufrock is portrayed as a man who is incapable of making decisions and lacks self-confidence. This is evident through his passive nature, where he continuously delays having to talk to women because he believes there is enough time. Written in the era of modernism, the reader is capable of unraveling that the poem’s true purpose was not only to show Prufrock’s inability to make decisions when it comes to love, but to show the desolation that one faces in times of a modernistic transition. Eliot depicts Prufrock’s transition phase through a gloomy and solemn tone, incorporating imagery, metaphor and synecdoche to fully illustrate Prufrock’s despondent state of mind and spirit.
Upon reading Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the first question which sprang to my mind was the question of how Eliot, a poet who was in his mid-twenties at the time, was able to write a poem dealing with the problems of aging in such a penetrating manner. Upon closer examination, however, I realized that Prufrock's aging was only incidental to his central problem. Prufrock's major problem is a problem of existential anguish. Prufrock's doubts about aging at a dinner party are merely one example of this anguish, and this party brings his psychology into sharp focus when the reader examines closely the moment in which the poem's events occur.
Despite the different eras in which they were written, T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock centers on a theme of love and rejection similar to that in Robert Browning’s The Last Ride Together. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it is unclear whether Prufrock is really in love with the person he is speaking to in the poem, and this reflects the sensibilities that came with modernist poetry. Prufrock is afraid of rejection, and is on the edge about whether or not to confess his love. In The Last Ride Together, it is clear that the speaker is eternally in love with the person he is addressing, which actually rejects typical beliefs of the Victorian era, since the Victorians believed in chaste marriage before true love. Browning’s character, however, is not afraid of rejection, but nevertheless gets rejected. Although both these poems deal with a different kind of love—whether it be the kind that is unsure or the kind that is undying—both speakers deal with the concept of rejection. This further signifies a relation between the two poems, because although they have contradicting ideas about life and love, they both end up in the same place, suggesting that neither of the characters has power over his fate when it comes to love. Although The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Last Ride Together differ in that they deal with contrasting ideas about time, they both project similar ideas of love and rejection. In comparing the two poems, readers can see that no matter what they wish, they do not have power over their love lives.
Modernism is a terminology given by historians to literature movement around late nineteenth century. It is a movement in the arts which purpose is to produce art different traditional forms. Its literature aim is to criticize problems of their world. They use specific characteristics implicitly and explicitly; implicitly to send messages to each other or to educated people in authority or explicitly to influence public opinions. “We are talking about two chronologies. One is the sequence of texts; the other is the sequence of intellectual movements. Such as feminism or such as Marxism which change the way we read texts.” (Armstrong). One of the most influential modernist writers is Thomas Stearns Eliot. His one of many poems Preludes is a direct and indirect criticism to his society. I will discuss in the following paragraphs how structuralism, Marxism, feminism approaches are found in the poem and how historical background of the poem can add more understanding of modernism.
T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" reveals the unvoiced inner thoughts of a disillusioned, lonely, insecure, and self-loathing middle-aged man. The thoughts are presented in a free association, or stream of consciousness style, creating images from which the reader can gain insight into Mr. Prufrock's character. Mr. Prufrock is disillusioned and disassociated with society, yet he is filled with longing for love, comfort, and companionship. He is self-conscious and fearful of his image as viewed through the world's eye, a perspective from which he develops his own feelings of insignificance and disgust. T. S. Eliot uses very specific imagery to build a portrait of Mr. Prufrock, believing that mental images provide insight where words fail.
I have chosen to write about T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” since the poem has surprised me in various ways. To begin, I was surprised at the fact that this so called “love song” was not a love song or poem at all. Actually, it was, but it was not a love that had two individuals admiring each other mutually. The poem addressed the issues of a man who tried to pursue a woman but could not because of the insecurities he dealt with. However, the poem caused me a bit of trouble in order to write a thesis statement about it. Ultimately, I was able to create one after reading Marisa Pagnattaro’s critical essay, “An overview of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.