T.S Eliots modernist poetry draws upon the bleakness of modernity and isolation.

Throughout the poems, Preludes and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot
reveals the silent reflection and resemblance of city life through an antiheroic
nature of the modern urban existence. As a result, our own experiences can be
characterised through the desiring necessities and unrequited yearnings as our
modern urban life is actually equivalent to Eliots poetic landscape. In that, we
become more hurt and overpowered by emotion that it ultimately leads to an
expected exposure of sadness, anguish, and insight into our own constructed
reality.
Let us go then you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky
Six oclock/The burnt-out ends of smoky days

He seeks a beautiful retreat, where the sky is scattered with stars. This lofty image sets
us up for the comedown of the following line.
Elliot again sets the time of day, this time with precision; six o'clock. This complements
and confirms the previous lines, that everyone in this part of the city eats dinner or is
going home around the same time. Elliot is comparing the end of the day to a fire slowly
burning out.

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

From the sawdust-trampled street

The image of oyster shells, which were served at restaurants in Eliots time as an
aphrodisiac, contributes to the theme of sexual frustration. As a food often served
cheaply in coastal-town bars, they also serve to reinforce the spit and sawdust/cheap
theme here.
Addresses the cheap restaurants' habit of simply lining the floor with sawdust and
people just threw their scraps on the floor. The floor was then swept out into the street at
the end of the day. This is all indicative of a cheap, dirty area of a city.

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

With the other masquerades

A suggestion of a facade put on to suit others. Though the masquerade is sadly rare
nowadays, this duplicity is still present in todays society.
Eliot comments on how people change themselves to conform to societal expectations
or to please other people. They do not act freely, as themselves; instead they put on a
metaphorical mask to suit other people.