J Alfred Prufrock

TS Elliot is very methodical about the craft and meaning of his poem: “The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock.” Through a plethora of literary devices, TS Elliot portrays a question that J. Alfred Prufrock never asked, through this unasked Question Elliot portrayed Prufrock as desperate to find a female partner to have a relationship with.

Elliot starts The Poem out by making an invitation saying “Let us go then, you and I” - to whom?: it remains unclear. The first Stanza goes like this:

Let us go then, you and I

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants

In the next stanza he says:

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Scuttling means fast paced suggesting that he should’ve moved quicker to get to the question because he is getting old as stated in the previous stanza. By reading these two stanzas we see that the poem is not only about a question but the timing of the question, and the more time he waits to ask the slimmer the possibilities are to ask the question and perhaps get an answer. It’s not only a matter of ‘If’ he should ask the question but also ‘when’ he should ask the question, describing it as when he should “force the moment to its crisis.”

“The LoveSong of J Alfred Prufrock” is a metaphor describing a question never asked portraying that Prufrock is searching for female partner to have a relationship with. As he travels this metaphorical street that leads men to ask a hard question, he remembers that he is growing old and still wonders when he should “force the moment to its crisis.” and ask the qustion to the person he invited in the