The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock Study Guide

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T.S. Eliot started writing "Prufrock Among the Women" in 1909 as a graduate student at Harvard. He
revised it over the next couple of years, changing the title to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" along
the way. First published in the Chicago magazine Poetry in June 1915, "Prufrock" later headlined Eliot's
first book of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). The collection established Eliot's reputation
as a Modernist poet to be reckoned with, and "Prufrock" detailed many of the techniques and themes

Eliot would expand with "The Waste Land" and later works: vocal fragmentation and allusiveness, a
precision of imagery borrowed from the 19th-century French Symbolists, a condemnation of the sterility
of the modern world, and a dry, self-conscious wit.

The poem is very much a young man's work, though its speaker, through dramatic monologue, is a
presumably middle-aged man. The farcical "J. Alfred Prufrock" name echoes Eliot's style at the time of
signing his name "T. Stearns Eliot," and we can assume that Eliot shared at least some of Prufrock's
anxieties over women, though he clearly satirizes Prufrock's neuroses (and, thus, his own) at points in
the poem. However, this remains a dangerous assumption, as Eliot famously maintained in his essay
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" that the "progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a
continual extinction of personality.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

SUMMARY “THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”

Summary

This poem, the earliest of Eliot’s major works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published
until 1915. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man—overeducated,
eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seems to be addressing a
potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummating
their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to “dare” an approach to the woman: In his mind
he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies, and he chides himself for “presuming”
emotional interaction could be possible at all. The poem moves from a series of fairly concrete (for Eliot)
physical settings—a cityscape (the famous “patient etherised upon a table”) and several interiors
(women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces)—to a series of vague ocean images conveying
Prufrock’s emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his second-rate status (“I am not
Prince Hamlet’). “Prufrock” is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of
character achieved.

Form

“Prufrock” is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of poem popular with Eliot’s predecessors.
Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. Three things characterize the dramatic
monologue, according to M.H. Abrams. First, they are the utterances of a specific individual (not the
poet) at a specific moment in time. Secondly, the monologue is specifically directed at a listener or
listeners whose presence is not directly referenced but is merely suggested in the speaker’s words. Third,
the primary focus is the development and revelation of the speaker’s character. Eliot modernizes the
form by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock’s interiority and isolation. The epigraph
to this poem, from Dante’s Inferno, describes Prufrock’s ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker
and will never betray to the world the content of Prufrock’s present confessions. In the world Prufrock
describes, though, no such sympathetic figure exists, and he must, therefore, be content with silent
reflection. In its focus on character and its dramatic sensibility, “Prufrock” anticipates Eliot’s later,
dramatic works.

The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random. While sections of the poem may resemble
free verse, in reality, “Prufrock” is a carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms. The bits and
pieces of rhyme become much more apparent when the poem is read aloud. One of the most prominent
formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains. Prufrock’s continual return to the “women [who]
come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” and his recurrent questionings (“how should I presume?”) and
pessimistic appraisals (“That is not it, at all.”) both reference an earlier poetic tradition and help Eliot
describe the consciousness of a modern, neurotic individual. Prufrock’s obsessiveness is aesthetic, but it
is also a sign of compulsiveness and isolation. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments
of sonnet form, particularly at the poem’s conclusion. The three three-line stanzas are rhymed as the
conclusion of a Petrarchan sonnet would be, but their pessimistic, anti-romantic content, coupled with
the despairing interjection, “I do not think they (the mermaids) would sing to me,” creates a contrast
that comments bitterly on the bleakness of modernity.
Commentary

“Prufrock” displays the two most important characteristics of Eliot’s early poetry. First, it is strongly
influenced by the French Symbolists, like Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, whom Eliot had been
reading almost constantly while writing the poem. From the Symbolists, Eliot takes his sensuous
language and eye for unnerving or anti-aesthetic detail that nevertheless contributes to the overall
beauty of the poem (the yellow smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are two good examples
of this). The Symbolists, too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot creates with Prufrock: the
moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the Symbolists would have been more
likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist, Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged
poet, a sort of artist for the common man.

The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. Eliot
sustained his interest in fragmentation and its applications throughout his career, and his use of the
technique changes in important ways across his body of work: Here, the subjects undergoing
fragmentation (and reassembly) are mental focus and certain sets of imagery; in The Waste Land, it is
modern culture that splinters; in the Four Quartets we find the fragments of attempted philosophical
systems. Eliot’s use of bits and pieces of formal structure suggests that fragmentation, although anxiety-
provoking, is nevertheless productive; had he chosen to write in free verse, the poem would have
seemed much more nihilistic. The kinds of imagery Eliot uses also suggest that something new can be
made from the ruins: The series of hypothetical encounters at the poem’s center are iterated and
discontinuous but nevertheless lead to a sort of epiphany (albeit a dark one) rather than just leading
nowhere. Eliot also introduces an image that will recur in his later poetry, that of the scavenger. Prufrock
thinks that he “should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Crabs
are scavengers, garbage-eaters who live off refuse that makes its way to the sea floor. Eliot’s discussions
of his own poetic technique (see especially his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”) suggest that
making something beautiful out of the refuse of modern life, as a crab sustains and nourishes itself on
garbage, may, in fact, be the highest form of art. At the very least, this notion subverts romantic ideals
about art; at best, it suggests that fragments may become reintegrated, that art may be in some way
therapeutic for a broken modern world. In The Waste Land, crabs become rats, and the optimism
disappears, but here Eliot seems to assert only the limitless potential of scavenging.

“Prufrock” ends with the hero assigning himself a role in one of Shakespeare’s plays: While he is no
Hamlet, he may yet be useful and important as “an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress,
start a scene or two...” This implies that there is still a continuity between Shakespeare’s world and ours,
that Hamlet is still relevant to us and that we are still part of a world that could produce something like
Shakespeare’s plays. Implicit in this, of course, is the suggestion that Eliot, who has created an “attendant
lord,” may now go on to create another Hamlet. While “Prufrock” ends with a devaluation of its hero, it
exalts its creator. Or does it? The last line of the poem suggests otherwise—that when the world
intrudes, when “human voices wake us,” the dream is shattered: “we drown.” With this single line, Eliot
dismantles the romantic notion that poetic genius is all that is needed to triumph over the destructive,
impersonal forces of the modern world. In reality, Eliot the poet is little better than his creation: He
differs from Prufrock only by retaining a bit of hubris, which shows through from time to time. Eliot’s
poetic creation, thus, mirrors Prufrock’s soliloquy: Both are an expression of aesthetic ability and
sensitivity that seems to have no place in the modern world. This realistic, anti-romantic outlook sets the
stage for Eliot’s later works, including The Waste Land.

T.S.Eliot and A Summary of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

One of the first true modernist poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a shifting, repetitive
monologue, the thoughts of a mature male as he searches for love and meaning in an uncertain, twilight
world.

T.S.Eliot wrote his dubious love song in 1910/11 but J.Alfred Prufrock didn't appear in print until June
1915, when editor Harriet Monroe, with Ezra Pound's recommendation, published it in the journal
Poetry. The poem was radically different to the more genteel accepted verse of the times and helped to
kick-start the modernist movement.

Eliot's poem caught the changes in consciousness perfectly. At the time of writing, class systems that had
been in place for centuries were under pressure like never before. Society was changing, and a new
order was forming. World War 1 was on the horizon and the struggles for power were beginning to alter
the way people lived and thought and loved.

J. Alfred Prufrock is a respectable character but has seen the seedier side of life. He's getting on in years
and is acutely aware of what he's become, measuring his life in coffee spoons, losing his hair, turning
thin. He's due for a refresh, a personal revolution, but doesn't know where to start.

Yet he still wants to make his mark on the world, even 'disturb the universe' whilst throughout the poem
he appears nervous, isolated and lacking in confidence. He may be intelligent, he may have experience
but he doesn't seem to trust in anyone or anything. But who can blame him? The world is crumbling and
with it comes the fragmentation of human sensibility.
Prufrock is in a life or death situation, between heaven and hell. The city is half-deserted. You can sense
the atmosphere isn't quite right. He's looking for answers.

The epigraph, in Italian, is a quotation from Dante's Inferno, canto 27. Dante faces the spirit of one
hellbound Guido da Montefeltro, a false advisor, and the two trade questions and answers. It's an
important lead in to the poem itself as the quote conveys the idea that the answer will be given (by
Guido) because no man has ever returned to Earth alive from the hellish abyss.

T.S.Eliot's poem is the story of a modern day Guido living in a smoky, city hell. He is insecure, lonely and
loveless.

Themes in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Love

Loneliness

Relationships

Society

Time

Generation Gap

Isolation
Psychological Issues

Mental Stability

Hero Worship

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Rhyme and Metre (Meter) - Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is 131 lines long and is mostly loose rhyming, that is, there is no
consistent rhyme scheme and no regular pattern to the rhythm.

But there are substantial sections with rhyme:

for example lines 23-67 contain plenty of full and slant rhyme - street/meet, create/plate, dare/stair/hair,
room/presume - and a good proportion of the rest of the poem has rhyme.Lines 37-48 in particular have
an unusual set of rhymes which not only help to reinforce Prufrock's neurotic personality but add a
comic effect to the idea that he might dare to disturb the universe, in one minute. Check
out dare/stair/hairand thin/chin/pin/thin whilst time and dare repeat towards the end of the
stanza.These rhymes certainly give the sense of song and bring a lyrical feel to the poem.

T.S. Eliot was a great believer in using both traditional and innovative poetic techniques and devices in
his work and this poem reflects this belief.

So, for example, loose iambic pentameter, tetrameter and trimeter pop up now and again to help keep
the poem on track as it heads out into the yellow fog of the cityscape.Note the fact that lines vary from 3
syllables to 20 (lines 45 and 102), and with well placed enjambment the reader's ability to scan and
understand can be tested to the full.

This shifting, repetitive poem is a parody of a love song; it flows then stumbles and hesitates its way
through the life of a middle aged male who can't decide where he stands in the world. Will he venture
out to find the love of his life? Now is the time to visit that room where the women come and go/Talking
of Michelangelo.

But Prufrock, the tentative male, envisages being ridiculed for having a bald patch. Time is running out,
or is it? Note the reference to the Andrew Marvell poem To His Coy Mistress in line 23 and Shakespeare's
play Twelfth Night in line 52 and Prince Hamlet in line 111.

Eliot also used French poet Jules LaForgue as inspiration for his repeated women who come and go
talking of Michelangelo. "Dans la piece les femmes vont et viennent / En parlant des maîtres de Sienne."
LaForgue was one of the innovators of the interior monologue and Eliot certainly exploited this
technique to the full in Prufrock.

There are fragments of images, gloomy cityscapes, reflective inner thoughts and an uneasy questioning
self that is the anti-hero Prufrock. He is both ditherer and dreamer, a split personality who
procrastinates, who is caught between fantasy and reality.

Further Analysis of Prufrock

Prufrock is lacking in self esteem and perhaps loathes himself. How do we know this? Well, note the
imagery in lines 57- 61 when he compares himself to an insect pinned and wriggling on the wall, and
again in lines 73/74 in which he sees himself as a lowly crustacean on the sea floor.

The questions continue as the narrative progresses, an echo of the scene from Dante - will Prufrock have
the courage to act, will he have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? He makes us think that he
has sacrificed much to get to this point in his life. He has fasted, prayed, wept, afraid for the future.
But how much of this is fiction dreamt up by a forlorn man past his best, who is constantly frustrated
because It is impossible to say just what I mean!

Is this the outcome of Prufrock's fear of rejection? He cannot bring himself to commit to his vision -
poetic, religious, amorous - he cannot even eat a peach due to a deep seated angst.

In the end he succumbs to harsh reality whilst fantasising about the mermaids who sing to each other
but who will never sing to him. Prufrock just can't snap out of this self-imposed existential mindset.
What is it he needs? Love, drugs, therapy?

Eliot's poem is full of metaphor and simile, simple rhyme and complex rhythms. By portraying Prufrock
as an anxious, neurotic individual he invites us to use his work of art as a mirror. Read it out loud, slowly,
and its intelligence and music will emerge.

No matter what sort of life we lead we might question, dare and invite others to share, before time and
fate take their toll. So you want to know how to change the universe? Sink your teeth into a juicy peach.

Personification in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Eliot uses the energies of the cat to help the reader focus in on the smoke and fog of the cityscape.
Strong repeated rhyme and assonance further enrich the experience in lines 15-22.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Summary and Analysis of Lines 1-36

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Lines 1-36 Summary:

J. Alfred Prufrock, a presumably middle-aged, intellectual, indecisive man, invites the reader along with
him through the modern city. He describes the street scene and notes a social gathering of women
discussing Renaissance artist Michelangelo. He describes yellow smoke and fog outside the house of the
gathering, and keeps insisting that there will be time to do many things in the social world.

Analysis:

The title of the poem is Eliot's first hint that this is not a traditional love poem at all. "J. Alfred Prufrock"
is a farcical name, and Eliot wanted the subliminal connotation of a "prude" in a "frock." (The original
title was "Prufrock Among the Women.") This emasculation contributes to a number of themes Eliot will
explore revolving around paralysis and heroism, but the name also has personal meaning for Eliot. He
wrote the poem in 1909 while a graduate student at Harvard (though he revised it over the next few
years, eventually publishing it in 1915 and in book form in 1917), and at the time he signed his name as
"T. Stearns Eliot."

While it would appear, then, that T. Stearns Eliot was using J. Alfred Prufrock as an alter ego to explore
his own emotions, this is not the case. Superficial differences aside - Eliot was a young man in 1909,
while Prufrock is balding and probably middle-aged - Eliot disdained poetry that focused on the poet
himself. He wrote in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" that the "progress of an artist is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." He crystallized his ideas about how to
achieve this extinction of personality in another essay, "Hamlet and His Problems": "The only way of
expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be the formula of that particular emotion." Simply put,
the objective correlative - a tangible, concrete thing - assumes the emotional significance in a work of
art; Eliot largely does away with abstract emotional ruminations. The examples and ramifications of the
objective correlative in "Prufrock" will be discussed later.
Eliot first achieves the extinction of his personality by setting "Prufrock" in the poetic form of a dramatic
monologue. In this form, the speaker addresses another person and the reader plays the part of the
silent listener; often the dramatic monologue is freighted with irony, as the speaker is partially unaware
of what he reveals. Robert Browning, the undisputed master of the dramatic monologue, exploited this
possibility in his most famous dramatic monologue, "My Last Duchess"; the reader learns much about
the Duke that he has not intended to expose.

The dramatic monologue fell out of fashion in 20th-century Modernism after its 19th-century Victorian
invention. Eliot was a great believer in the historical value of art; in "Tradition and the Individual Talent,"
he argued that "the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past," especially the literary
past. The epigraph is a quotation from Dante's Inferno (27.61-66), and translates: "If I thought that my
reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further
movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you
without fear of infamy." The speaker, Guido da Montefeltro, imprisoned in a flame in Hell, relates his
shameful, evil life to Dante only because he thinks Dante will never go back to earth and repeat it.

Before we analyze the Dante quote, it is important to note that Eliot's brand of Modernist poetry sought
to revive the literary past, as he argued for in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." His poetry, including
"Prufrock," is peppered with allusions to the Greeks, Shakespeare, the Metaphysicals, and more. Eliot
does not neglect the modern, however; it is often front and center, usually with unfavorable
comparisons to the past.

The unpleasant modern world is where "Prufrock" begins. Prufrock, much like da Montefeltro in The
Inferno, is confined to Hell; Prufrock's, however, is on earth, in a lonely, alienating city. The images of the
city are sterile and deathly; 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).
The use of enjambment, the running over of lines, further conveys the labyrinthine spatiality of the city.
Although Eliot does not explore the sterility of the modern world as deeply here as he does in "The
Wasteland" (1922), the images are undeniably bleak and empty. Often overlooked in the opening salvo is
that Prufrock's imagery progresses from the general to the specific and, tellingly, from the elevated to
the low. We go from a general look at the skyline to the streets to a hotel room to sawdust-covered
floors in restaurants. This debasement continues throughout the poem, both literally in the verticality of
the images and figuratively in their emotional associations for Prufrock.
Indeed, emotional associations are key, since Eliot deploys the objective correlative technique
throughout the poem rather than dwell abstractly on Prufrock's feelings. The above images all speak to
some part of Prufrock's personality. The etherized patient, for instance, reflects his paralysis (his inability
to act) while the images of the city depict a certain lost loneliness. The objective correlative switches to
the "yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes" (14) in the second stanza. Although Eliot said
the fog was suggestive of the factory smoke from his hometown St. Louis, the associations with a cat are
obvious. Though Eliot was arguably the greatest lover of cats ever to write poetry (he wrote a number of
poems on them, and the musical "Cats" is based on Eliot's work), here the feline correlation seems
undesirable.

The fog/cat seems to be looking in on the roomful of fashionable women "talking of Michelangelo" (13).
Unable to enter, it lingers pathetically on the outside of the house, and we can imagine Prufrock
avoiding, yet desiring, physical contact in much the same way (albeit with far less agility). Eliot again uses
an image of physical debasement to explore Prufrock's self-pitying state; the cat goes down from the
high windowpanes to the "corners of the evening" (17) to the "pools that stand in drains" (18), lets soot
from the high chimneys fall on its back (since it is lower down than the chimneys), then leaps from the
terrace to the ground. While Eliot appreciated the dignity of cats, this particular soot-blackened cat does
not seem so dignified. Rather, the cat appears weak, non-confrontational, and afraid to enter the house.
Moreover, Prufrock's prude-in-a-frock effeminacy emerges through the cat, as felines generally have
feminine associations.

Regardless of what one takes from these images, the bewildering collage points to another technique
Eliot and the Modernists pioneered: fragmentation. The Modernists felt their writing should mirror their
fractured and chaotic world. Fragmentation seems to imply a disordered lack of meaning, but the
Modernists resisted this instinct and suggested that meaning could be excavated from the ruins. Just as
we can make sense of the seemingly chaotic combination of a 14th-century Dante allusion and a 20th-
century dramatic monologue, we can draw meaning from the rapid-fire metropolitan montage Prufrock
paints.

Images and allusions are not the only fragmented features of "Prufrock." The rhythm of the lines is
deliberately irregular. At times in unrhymed free verse, Eliot occasionally rhymes for long stretches (lines
4-12) and then not at all; his rhyme scheme itself seems like the confusing "Streets that follow like a
tedious argument" (8). He also twice uses the refrain of "In the room the women come and go / Talking
of Michelangelo" (13-14, 35-36), and often begins lines with the word "And" (7, 23, 29 32, 33). As the
word found in three of these lines implies - "time" (23, 29, 32) - the repetitions have something to do
with Prufrock's relationship with time.
Prufrock indecisively cycles around even the smallest of concerns: "And time yet for a hundred
indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea" (32-34). He
seems rooted in the present tense and this, according to Eliot and most Modernists, is an unhealthy
approach to time. The opening image of the evening "spread out" (2) against the sky is an allusion to a
metaphor frequently used in turn-of-the-century French philosopher Henri Bergson's work Time and
Free Will (1889). Bergson was a great influence on Eliot; the latter attended the philosopher's lectures in
Paris in 1910 and was influenced by his theories on consciousness. In Timeand Free Will, Bergson argues
that time is a single, continuous, and flowing "durée," or duration, rather than a succession of discrete
steps with distinct tenses.

The only way to achieve this mental sense of duration, Bergson maintains, is through direct intuition
rather than indirect analysis. While much New Age philosophy and theory has hijacked this idea - that
one should feel rather than think is an appealing concept - the damaging effects to Prufrock are evident.
He is clearly a thinker, not a feeler, and his indecisive thoughts contribute directly to his paralysis,
perhaps the most important theme in the poem. As the image of the cat unable to penetrate the house
suggests, Prufrock cannot make a decision and act on it. Instead of a flowing duration that integrates all
of time, he is imprisoned in the present.

Prufrock's anxiety is rooted in the social world. Not only is he afraid to confront the woman talking of
Michelangelo (whose most famous sculpture, David, is the epitome of masculine beauty, a daunting
prospect for the flaccid Prufrock), he seems intimidated by the social posturing he must engage in:

There will be time, there will be time

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

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

(26-29)

The "works and days of hands" is a reference to 8th-century B.C. Greek poet Hesiod's poem about the
farming year, "Works and Days." Prufrock seems to resent the divergence between the blistered hands of
hard-working farmers and the smooth ones of social players, just as he dislikes the masks people wear in
the social arena ("To prepare a faceŠ"). His social anxiety assumes more importance in the middle part of
the poem.

is is diagnosed in these six stanzas. The smallest action - descending stairs - is occasion for magnified self-
scrutiny and the fear that he will "Disturb the universe" (46). He continues asking himself questions
about how to comport himself, but admits he will reverse these decisions soon. His inaction is constantly
tied to the social world: "Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, / Have the strength to force the moment
to its crisis?" (79-80) The somewhat silly rhyme here underscores the absurdity of Prufrock's concerns.

Yet Eliot fleshes out Prufrock's character and makes his worries, however trivial, human. Prufrock twice
refers to his balding head, describes his plain, middle-aged clothing, and draws us into his point-of-view
of the social world. His eye is specific in its observation: "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare /
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)" (63-64) Although the first line is an allusion to the
line "A bracelet of bright hair about the bone" from John Donne's poem "The Relic," a line Eliot admires
for its sharp contrast in his essay "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921), the specificity of Prufrock's eye shows
more the influence of the 19th-century French Symbolists, such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud,
Stephene Mallarme, and particularly Jules Laforgue. (In fact, Eliot's repeating line about Michelangelo is
a somewhat parodic nod to a similar line by Laforgue about the masters of the Sienne school.) The
Symbolists butted heads with the Realist movement, believing life could be represented only by symbols,
however confusing or chaotic. Eliot's objective correlative serves a similar purpose, expressing Prufrock's
emotional life through concrete, oft-elusive symbols.

As detailed as Prufrock's eye is, he feels the effects of the penetrating social gaze far more deeply:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all -

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

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When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall

(55-58)
"Sprawling on a pin" refers to the practice of pinning insect specimens for study, suggesting Prufrock
feels similarly scrutinized, but the key here is Prufrock's discussion of eyes. As with his catalogue of the
"Arms that are braceleted and white and bare," Prufrock isolates the body part from the rest of the
body. Detached, the eyes multiply in power; they dominate both the room and the bodies of those who
look at Prufrock.

Anxiety is foremost a concern with the future, and Prufrock continues to show his inability to advance in
time. Of the six stanzas here, four begin with "And" (37, 55, 62, 75) while five lines at the end of different
stanzas do (61, 68-69, 85-86), suggesting a repetitive, inescapable present tense. His mental logic
conforms to a similar pattern; the "sprawling on a pin" lines make tiny steps forward ("And
when..."/"When I am..."/"Then how..." [57-59]) rather than large leaps. Prufrock's refrain "And indeed
there will be time" (23, 37) is an allusion to Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
("Had we but world enough, and time" [1]), in which the speaker urges his lady to speed up their
courtship. As with most of Eliot's allusions in "Prufrock," the Marvell reference is ironic. Rather than
hurrying his lady, Prufrock makes excuses for himself; he assures himself there will be time to act,
although his repetitive, paralytic nature has so far belied that. The line also contains a possible pun;
"indeed" can be read as "in deed," another reference to Prufrock's inability to act (to do a deed). A
further irony unfolds in Prufrock's use of the word "presume." While the Latinate root of "presume"
means "to anticipate," something Prufrock spends much time doing, its main English meaning is "to
undertake without leave or clear justification," a boldness Prufrock surely lacks.

Not only is Prufrock paralyzed in the present, but he seems to have a disordered sense of time. He
describes the "evenings, mornings, afternoons" (50), and the odd order gives us pause. While it primarily
describes a cycle from night to the next day, reinforcing the idea of repetition, its abrupt switch from
"evenings" to "mornings" echoes Eliot's images of vertical descent present in the first three stanzas. He
resumes the vertical descent motif in this section of the poem as well; Prufrock descends the stairs, and
as he watches smoke rising from pipes and lonely men "leaning out windows" (72) just below, he feels he
"should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" (73-74). This final
alliterative image of debasement (the third animal association for Prufrock after the cat and insect
connections) paints a pathetic portrait of Prufrock, but the suggestion of a crab is perhaps an allusion to
Shakespeare's "Hamlet," in which Hamlet mocks Polonius (Eliot later explicitly references "Hamlet,"
making this more plausible): "for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go
backward" (2.2.205-206).

Perhaps, then, Prufrock's propensity to move backwards and downwards is suggestive of his nearness to
death, of his backpedaling down into Hell. The Dante epigraph casts a deathly pallor over the entire
poem, and Prufrock himself sees "the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker" (85). While he says in
the next line "in short, I was afraid" (86) in reference to his fear of social action, he may also be referring
to this deathly figure awaiting him.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Summary and Analysis of Lines 87-131

Buy Study Guide

Lines 87-131 Summary:

Prufrock wonders if, after various social gestures, it would have been worthwhile to act decisively if it
resulted in a woman's rejection of him. He thinks he is not a Prince Hamlet figure, but a secondary
character in life. Worried over growing old, he adopts the fashions of youth. By the beach, he sees
images of mermaids singing and swimming.

Analysis:

The movement in the final section of the poem swings from fairly concrete, realistic scenes from the
social world - "After the cups, the marmalade, the teaŠAfter the novels, and the teacups, after the skirts
that trail along the floor" (88, 102) - to fantastic images of mermaids "riding seaward on the waves /
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back" (126-127). Eliot's objective correlative grows more
vague; what exactly does Prufrock feel here? Perhaps Prufrock himself is unsure: "It is impossible to say
just what I mean! / But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen" (104-105). His
own inarticulacy results in the magic lantern's wild kaleidoscopic imagery of teacups and mermaids;
aside from desperation and loneliness, confusion is one of the objective correlative's main emotional
associations.

But Prufrock shows a wise self-regard when he admits he is

not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

(111-116)

Hamlet, Shakespeare's famous tragic hero from the play of the same name, is literature's other great
indecisive man. Hamlet waffles between wanting to kill his stepfather and holding off for a variety of
reasons. The allusion, then, is somewhat ironic, since Prufrock is not even as decisive as Hamlet is.
Instead, he is more like the doddering Polonius of Hamlet (the "for you yourself, sir" quote from Hamlet
2.2.205-206, if the "ragged claws" [73] line alludes to it, is spoken by Hamlet to Polonius), or the
conventional Shakespearean "Fool" (119). Prufrock is the second-in-command at best, and he comes off
as a mock-hero; even the absence of an "I" preceding "Am an attendant lord" bespeaks his lack of ego.
The numerous caesurae (pauses) from commas and semicolons in the stanza underscore Prufrock's
stagnation and paralysis.

The only thing in Prufrock's life not paralyzed is time; it marches on, and Prufrock laments "I grow old . . .
I grow old . . . / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" (121). The rolled trouser, a popular
bohemian style at the time, is a pathetic attempt to ward off death. While he continues to be anxious
about the future, Prufrock now seems to regard the future, paradoxically, from a future standpoint. His
refrain of "And would it have been worth it, after all" (87, 99) places his actions in the perfect conditional
tense. It is as though he is reviewing actions he has yet to take. Either time has accelerated his aging
process, or this look to the past is a way for Prufrock to delude himself into thinking he has made some
decisive progress in life.

Previously, Prufrock wondered if he should "dare / Disturb the universe" (45-46) and squeeze "the
universe into a ball" (92). The latter is a reference to Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress": "Let us roll all our
strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball, / And tear our pleasures with rough strife / Thorough
the iron gates of life" (41-44). Marvell urges his lady to engage in sex with him, as death draws ever
closer and their time is running out.

Prufrock, on the other hand, knows he is going to die soon but he still cannot even "dare to eat a peach"
(122). While Eliot's main intent is to trivialize Prufrock's anxieties - a simple piece of fruit confounds him -
the peach has a few other possible meanings. First, it is the Chinese symbol for marriage and
immortality, two things Prufrock desires. Moreover, the peach, through shape and texture, has long been
a symbol for female genitalia. Prufrock's anxiety about eating a peach, then, has much to do with his
feelings of sexual inadequacy, his worry that his balding head and thin physique earn him the scorn of
women.

Accordingly, Prufrock immediately switches his attention to the mermaids "singing, each to each" (124) -
the society of women who ignore him. The elusive images perhaps have more cohesion than on first
glance:

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

(126-128)

Prufrock has just wondered "Shall I part my hair behind?" (122), and previously he has agonized over his
bald spot, turned his keen eye to the women's arms "downed with light brown hair!" (64), and agonized
over eating a fuzzy peach. Mermaids are conventionally depicted combing their hair with a mirror, so as
symbols of vanity and lush beauty - "wreathed with seaweed red and brown" (130), they possess even
more artificial hair - they threaten Prufrock (whose thinning hair is perhaps now a salt-and-pepper
mixture of "white and black" and no longer "red and brown").
When Prufrock finishes the poem by pronouncing "We have lingered in the chambers of the seaŠTill
human voices wake us, and we drown" (129, 131), he completes the vertical descent Eliot has been
deploying throughout the poem. He has plunged into his own Dantesque underworld and, through the
"We" pronoun, forces us to accompany him - hoping, like da Montefeltro from the epigraph, that we will
not be able to return to the mermaids on top and shame him by repeating his story.

The concluding two three-line stanzas act as a sestet (six lines). Although the rhyme scheme differs (here
it is abbcdd), Petrarchan sonnets complement the opening octet (first eight lines) with a sestet. This is
Eliot's final mock-allusion to yet another Renaissance artist (after Dante and Michelangelo). Petrarch
unrequitedly mooned after his love, Laura, but Prufrock, whose name sounds much like Petrarch's, does
not even have an unattainable ideal love. He has unattainable, frustrated, paralyzed desire for all women
who reject him; they are all inaccessible, and any reminder of the social world ("human voices") drowns
him - and, he hopes, his reader-as-Dante - deeper in his watery Hell.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Themes

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Prufrockian paralysis

Paralysis, the incapacity to act, has been the Achilles heel of many famous, mostly male, literary
characters. Shakespeare's Hamlet is the paragon of paralysis; unable to sort through his waffling, anxious
mind, Hamlet makes a decisive action only at the end of "Hamlet." Eliot parodically updates Hamlet's
paralysis to the modern world in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Parodically, because Prufrock's
paralysis is not over murder and the state of a corrupt kingdom, but whether he should "dare to eat a
peach" (122) in front of high-society women.

Indeed, Prufrock's paralysis revolves around his social and sexual anxieties, the two usually tied together.
Eliot intended Prufrock's name to resound of a "prude" in a "frock," and the hero's emasculation shows
up in a number of physical areas: "his arms and legs are thin" (44) and, notably, "his hair is growing thin"
(41). The rest of the poem is a catalogue of Prufrock's inability to act; he does not, "after tea and cakes
and ices, / Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis" (79-80).
The original title of the poem was "Prufrock Among the Women," and Prufrock, as a balding, weak,
neurotic, effete intellectual, is both baffled and intimidated by women. Perhaps the central image of his
anxiety is his being "pinned and wriggling on the wall" (58) under the unflinching gaze of women
(exacerbated since the women's eyes, much like their "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare"
[63], seem eerily disconnected from their bodies). At least here the women seem to be paying attention
to him, however hostile they may be. By the end of the poem, Prufrock feels ostracized from the society
of women, the "mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me" (124-125).
Interestingly, Prufrock's obsession with his bald spot rears its ugly head here; the beautiful, vain
mermaids comb the "white hair of the waves blown back" (127). As hair is a symbol of virility, Eliot
suggests that Prufrock's paralysis is deeply rooted in psychosexual anxiety.

Yet Prufrock admits he is not even "Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; / Am an attendant lordŠ /
Almost, at times, the Fool" (111-112, 119). At best he is the doddering Polonius from "Hamlet," or a
generic clown. He is a modern tragic hero, which is to say he is a mock-hero whose concerns are pathetic
yet still real. The final six lines of the poem comprise a sestet that somewhat echoes the Petrarchan
sonnet, yet Prufrock, unlike Petrarch, does not have an ideal, unrequited love like Laura; he has a very
real anxiety about all women.

Temporal repetition and anxiety

Prufrock's paralysis (see Prufrockian paralysis, above) roots itself in the poem's structure. Eliot deploys
several refrains, such as "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo" (13-14, 35-36)
and "And would it have been worth it, after all" (87, 99), to underscore Prufrock's tendency to get stuck
on a problem. Just when we believe Prufrock has waded through the "hundred visions and revisions"
(33) and come to a conclusion, he echoes a line from the beginning of the stanza. For instance, the
double "'at all'" from the woman's "'That is not it at all, / That is not what I meant, at all'" (109-110)
provides the answer for Prufrock's original question of "And would it have been worth it, after all" (no,
evidently).

The refrains and echoes indicate Prufrock's entrapment in the present tense, but Eliot notes his hero's
other temporal afflictions. The swinging rhythm of the poem - at times rhymed for long stretches, often
not - hints at a confusing, chaotic sense of time within Prufrock's head. The confusion establishes itself in
the "And would it have been worth it, after all" line. By using the perfect conditional tense, Prufrock
deludes himself into thinking he has made a decision and is now reviewing it.
This delusion only masks Prufrock's greater anxiety about the future and aging. Already characterized as
having lost the luster of youth (and pathetically trying to approximate the bohemian style of rolling his
trousers), the only thing Prufrock marches toward decisively is death. The poem's epigraph from Dante's
Inferno casts a deathly pallor over the proceedings, and Prufrock seems already in his own nightmarish
afterlife. The two allusions to Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress" ironically comment on
Prufrock's attitude toward life. In the poem, the speaker urges his lady to have sex with him while they
are still young and alive. Prufrock's allusions, however - "And indeed there will be time" (23) and "Would
it have been worth while, / Š To have squeezed the universe into a ball" (90, 92) - reinforce his fixation on
paralysis rather than sex. He deludes himself into thinking he has plenty of time left, and thus does not
need to act; death looms, though, however much he wants to deny it. Sex, of course, reproduces new
life while death ends it; Prufrock is somewhere in the middle, gradually advancing on the latter.

Fragmentation

One of the key terms in Modernist literature, fragmentation is the accumulation of numerous and varied
- often to chaotic effect - signs (words, images, sounds). James Joyce's Ulysses, with fragments as
obscure as specific letters that course meaningfully throughout the novel, is possibly the defining
fragmented Modernist work. But it is so successful because the Modernists also believed that meaning
could be made out of these fragments. To quote from Eliot's "The Wasteland," possibly the defining
Modernist poem: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" (431). From the ruins of fragments,
some coherence can be established; only this gives the chaos of modern life hope.

Prufrock concerns itself with fragmentation, yet it does not quite have the hopefulness of "The
Wasteland" (it should be noted that many readers do not see this optimism behind the finale of "The
Wasteland"). The city Prufrock lives in is itself fragmented, a scattered collection of "Streets that follow
like a tedious argument" (8) above which "lonely men in shirt-sleeves" (72) lean out of their isolated
windows. The population is fragmented, lost and alone; even the sterile skyline resembles a "patient
etherized upon a table" (3).

Eliot achieves much of this fragmentation through his exquisite imagery. Whether it is the subliminal
comparison between the fog "that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes" (16) and feline movement, a
self-conscious dissection of how women's eyes have Prufrock "pinned and wriggling on the wall" (58), or
Prufrock's self-debasement as a "pair of ragged claws" (73), the images in "Prufrock" are specific and
symbolic. Eliot takes a cue from the 19th-century French Symbolists - Charles Baudelaire, Arthur
Rimbaud, Stephene Mallarme, and particularly Jules Laforgue - who believed that life should be
represented in literature through symbolic, and not realistic, forms. Eliot uses what he has referred to as
the "objective correlative," in which he grafts emotional meaning onto otherwise concrete objects, such
as the cat, an insect specimen (the pin), and the crab's claws. His intent behind these fragmented images
is, as he has argued in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," that the "progress of an artist is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." Out of the fragmented images we come
away with a coherent analysis of Prufrock-the-character, not of Eliot-the-poet.

Augmenting our appreciation of the fragmented Prufrock is insight into his mind and voice. His mind is
perhaps more easily represented; all over the place, interrupted by self-interrogation and self-
consciousness, looping back on itself, Prufrock's train of thought is deeply fragmented. But his voice is
Eliot's greater achievement, one that sows the seeds for "The Wasteland." What is Prufrock's voice,
poetically speaking? It is difficult to answer because it is a combination of so many historic poetic voices.
The poem comes in the form of a dramatic monologue, a form that is usually fit for a resonant speaking
voice (and one that extinguishes the personality of the poet, too). But "Prufrock" has a chorus of
fragmented voices - the epigraph to Dante, the frequent allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, and many
poetic predecessors - which deny the existence of a solo voice. This, then, is Prufrock's voice: a
fragmentation of voices past and present that somehow harmonize. In "The Wasteland," Eliot would go
on to write a poem whose vocal origins are hugely varied and hidden, much like Joyce's Ulysses.

Debasement and Hell

The opening image of the evening "spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table" (2-
3) hints that what is lower down will be much worse. The epigraph from Dante's Inferno, a work in which
the hero descends into the nine successive levels of Hell, also suggests this lowering of height and
expectations. Indeed, Prufrock sweeps the reader on a generally downward ride - from the skyline to
street life, down stairs during a party, even to the sea floor. Prufrock consistently feels worse about
himself in these situations - the reference to "Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" (74) is the
ultimate in self-pitying - but they have more resonance when we consider the Dante epigraph. Prufrock
is descending into his own Hell, and he brings the reader along with him for safety - just as Guido da
Montefeltro tells Dante his story in Hell only because he thinks Dante will never resurface and tell others
about it. Fittingly, Prufrock switches from his first-person singular narration to first-person plural in the
last stanza: "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and
brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown" (129-131). For his final plunge, Prufrock wants to
make sure that we, his Dantesque listener, accompany him into his self-pitying Hell.

Summary of The Long Song

Popularity: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a dramatic narrative poem by T. S Eliot, first written
between 1910-1911 and was published in June 1915 and again in 1917. The poem reflects the thoughts
of a person searching for love in an uncertain world. Despite knowing what to say and how to express his
love, he is hesitant. In his mind, he goes further in his relationship and observation. However, physically
he remains in the same place as he continues to talk to another person through his monologue. The
poem has gained immense popularity since its publication due to its pseudo-romantic tone.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – as an Anti-love Poem: Although the title of the poem suggests that
its content is enchanting about the ripe memories of love, the situation is quite contrary. The poem
captures the unexpressed love and fragmented thoughts of the narrator. The narrator of the poem is a
middle-aged man, who is in love with a lady but lacks the courage to express his feelings for her. The
expressions of confusion and lack of courage remain at the core of the poem. Through his regret of aging
and frustration of unfulfilled desires, the narrator also expresses that the time does not wait for anyone.

Major Themes: The poem comprises thoughts of a middle-aged man whose life is beset in confusion and
does not allow him to act according to his will. His subconscious mind asks questions that have deep
philosophical meanings and is also afraid of rejection. He considers himself unworthy of women, as he
continues to worry about the reaction of the people. The poem reflects modern delusional thought’s
through Prufrock on how the ancient society forced people to live meaningless lives and allow other’s
opinion to dominate their thoughts. This fear of being judged leaves a person broken, and as he/she
becomes old, they regret their decision and become depressive as seen in the poem.

Analysis of Literary Devices in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Literary devices, a significant part of any literary piece, are used to highlight hidden meanings. These
devices also help in bringing clarity and uniqueness. T.S. Eliot has also used various literary devices such
as metaphors, similes, personification, and irony in this poem. The analysis of some of the literary
devices is given below.

Personification: Eliot has used a personification that means to use emotions for inanimate objects. He
has personified trees and other objects in the poem. The phrase “the tree waved as I walked by” shows
the trees as humans, and they wave at him. He has also personified “Yellow fog” as a lurking cat or even
a dog.Metaphor: There are various metaphors used in the poem. “Hollywood” stands for the
entertainment Similarly, “the man” and “Washington” are metaphors of government during that
period.Simile: A simile is a device used to compare two different objects to understand meanings by
comparing these object’s qualities. “The streets that follow like a tedious argument” is one of the
examples of simile used in the poem. Perhaps the people or the crowd talking across the street sounded
like an argument to the narrator. In the second example “While streets the evening is spread out against
the sky, Like a patient etherized upon a table…” the evening is compared to death.Irony: Irony is a figure
of speech that states the opposite meanings of the situation being discussed. Prufrock, in the poem,
thinks he has a lot of time, but in reality, he is running out of time.Epigraph: It refers to a quote,
statement or poem that is set at the beginning of the document before the actual poem or a literary
piece begins. Eliot has used a stanza from Dante’s “Inferno” before starting the actual
poem.Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sounds in the same lines such as
the use of /f/ sound in “fix you in a formulated phrase”

This analysis of literary devices shows that Eliot excels in using literary devices to grab the reader’s
attention. It also shows that the effective use of these devices helps readers understand Eliot’s message.

Analysis of Poetic Devices in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Although poetic devices are the same as literary devices, some are specifically used in poems. T. S. Eliot
has used following poetic devices in his poem to make it appealing.

Stanza: The structure of the stanza varies as the poem progresses. Stanzas of two, seven and twelve
verses have been used throughout the poem.Rhyme Scheme: S. Eliot has used simple rhyme pattern in
this poem. In the first two lines, the poet has used rhyming couplet. The rhyme pattern also changes
between rhymed and unrhymed lines as the poem progresses.Repetition: There is a repetition of the
phrase “let us go” in line one, four and twelve. The line fifteen and sixteen also start with “the yellow”
and ends with “window-panes.” Similarly, the words “do I dare” have also been repeated in the poem.
The repetition of these phrases has enhanced the musical impact of the poem.Refrain: The lines
repeated at some distance in the poems are called refrain. The phrases such as, “the yellow” “window-
panes” and “let us go” have been repeated. Therefore, they have become a type of refrain.

In the final analysis, it can be stated the use of these poetic devices has brought musical quality hard to
find in such free verse poems. Eliot has successfully blended poetic devices with literary devices and
further with his message to show that he understands the art of poetry and uses this art to convey his
message effectively.
Quotes for Usage from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

These lines can be quoted while speaking about or delivering a lecture on an adventure undertaken to
an unknown place where one finds strange things that make him curious. This can also be used in
a dialogue about personal experiences.

“Oh, do not ask, “What is it?

Let us go and make our visit.”

Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

The initial reception to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, can be summed up in a
contemporary review published in The Times Literary Supplement, on the 21st of June 1917. The
anonymous reviewer wrote: “The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the
very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry.” There
appears to be a trend among the literary elite of bashing poetry that will later become to be renowned
as innovative in its field, or heralding change within the realm of poetry. ‘Prufrock’, as it is more
commonly known, is definitely one of the latter: although initially hated, as can be evidenced by the
above comment, it has since gone one to be considered by scholars as the onset of Modernist poetry,
replacing the Romantic and the Georgian rhymes that had dominated Europe, and perhaps one of the
most exclusively American methods of writing.

T.S. Eliot started writing ‘Prufrock’ in 1910. It was published in the 1915 issue of ‘Poetry: A Magazine of
Verse’, one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world, which was founded in
1912 by Harriet Monroe, and remains in circulation today.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Summary

It isn’t easy to decide what Prufrock is about; the fragmented poetic landscape of T.S. Eliot’s writing
make it difficult to pin down one exact feeling within The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. However, at its
most simplistic, ‘Prufrock’ is the inner monologue of a city gentleman who is stricken by feelings of
isolation and inadequacy, and an incapability of taking decisive action. It is considered one of the most
visceral, emotional poems, and remains relevant today, particularly with millennials who are more than a
little bit used to these feelings.

It is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of writing which was very popular from around 1757
to 1922. Examples of dramatic monologue include Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time), Henry James
(Portrait of a Lady), Robert Browning (Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister), and the most infamous of all,
James Joyce (Ulysses), for which the term ‘stream of consciousness’ writing was invented. ‘Prufrock’ is an
early prototype of the ‘stream of consciousness’ writing, although it leans far more towards Browning
than Joyce.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Analysis

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 with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

Although it might seem ludicrous to apply the label to a 140-line poem, Eliot’s careful word-usage and
his economization of language means that every flicker of symbolism is important. The opening line ‘Let
us go then, you and I’ provides the reader with a hint that the poem needs to be read as an internalized
monologue – it gives us the idea that the narrator is speaking to another person, and thus what is being
said is a reflection of his own personality. In this case, the personality of Alfred J. Prufrock is one that’s
pedantic, slightly miserable (‘like a patient etherized upon a table’), and focused mainly on the negatives
(‘restless nights in one-night cheap hotels’). Note the emptiness of the world: ‘oyster-shells’, ‘sawdust
restaurants’; everything is impermanent, everything is about to dissolve into nothing. The world is
transitory, half-broken, unpopulated, and about to collapse.

The setting that Eliot paints, in his economic language, gives us a half-second glance at a world that
seems largely unpopulated. Note that he does not mention anyone else in the poem, lending it an air of
post-apocalyptic silence, though it is left ambiguous whether it is the world that is actually this way, or
Prufrock’s miserable nature that is painting it in such a manner.

To that point, please note the use of the name ‘Prufrock’ – the very name implies a pedantic character.

Scholars, however, have been undecided on the true nature of what the first line means. Perrine believes
that ‘you and I’ shows the division between Prufrock’s own nature; Mutlu Konuk Blasing suggests that it
is the relationship between Prufrock and Eliot that is represented in the poem. Similarly, the name of
‘Prufrock’ has been taken to symbolize both everything – Prufrock as an intelligent, farcical character,
emasculated by the literary world and its bluestockings – and nothing at all – Prufrock as part of
Prufrock-Litton, a furniture store in Missouri, where T.S. Eliot grew up.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.
Finally there is a presence in the poem besides the voice of J. Prufrock – the women talking of
Michelangelo. Though they are a living presence, the focus on ‘Michelangelo’ actually serves to deaden
them; they exist in the poem as a series of conversations, which Prufrock lumps into one category by
calling them ‘the women’. It sets the scene at a party, and simultaneously sets Prufrock on his own: an
island in the sea of academia, floating along on light sophistication and empty conversations. Prufrock is
removed from the world of people, seeming almost a spirit, so acute is his distance from the rest of
society.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

Critics are divided as to the symbolism of the yellow smog. Michael North wrote, “The yellow fog that
rubs its back upon the window-panes” appears clearly to every reader as a cat, but the cat itself is
absent, represented explicitly only in parts — back, muzzle, tongue — and by its actions — licking,
slipping, leaping, curling. The metaphor has in a sense been hollowed out to be replaced by a series of
metonyms, and thus it stands as a rhetorical introduction to what follows.” Metonym, according to Terry
Eagleton, is the sum of parts – in this poem, the ‘cat’ that is made by the yellow fog is fragmented and
ghostly. It is never explicitly stated to be a cat, but hinted at.

The fragmentation of the cat could also symbolize the fragmentation of Prufrock’s psyche; the very
schism that is leading him to have this conversation, his hope of risking, and his terror of risking, his
interest in women, and his terror of them. Much like the cat, Prufrock is on the outside looking in at a
world that has not been prepared for him.
This fragmentation can also be applied to the earlier reference to ‘the women’, which are not really
described in any way, but are instead considered by the sum of their parts in conversation – they only
exist because they are ‘talking of Michelangelo’.

Furthermore, fragmentation is a Modernist technique, which had not since been seen before in
literature, and was probably not very well received by the high circle of literary elite. Modernist poets
and writers believed that their artistry should mirror the chaotic world that they lived in; seldom is
meaning, in the real world, parcelled up and handed over in whole parts. But in pieces. This is why the
poem is so significantly argued over: the very fragmentation that Eliot wrote for it is the wealth of a
seemingly inexhaustible source of reasonings. One can take almost any approach, any assignation of
meaning, to J. Prufrock and his world. One can make their own meaning from the clues that are provided
by Eliot’s writing.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

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

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Note again the very same process of fragmentation providing a broken-in society, a patchwork view of
humanity that only serves to populate the poem with more emptiness. Prufrock’s distance from
contemporary society reflects itself in this fragmentation; he reduces people to the sum of their parts,
and thus by doing so, empties the world of others.
Prufrock’s indecisiveness, and his stating thereof, does not quite stop the poem, but rather, increases its
pace. By focusing on ‘there will be time to murder and create, / and time for all the works and days of
hands / that lift and drop a question on our plate; time for you and time for me, / and time yet for a
hundred indecisions’ he actually creates a nervous, hasty, skittering feeling to the poem. The overuse of
the word ‘time’ both renders it meaningless, and lends the reader a state of anxiety, that no matter how
much Prufrock focuses on time, he can never quite have enough to achieve his goals. The sense of time,
time, time, presses upon the reader, and the repetition of the world in fact makes the reader more
conscious of the passing of the minutes, rather than less. It can be therefore read as the hasty rush of
daily life, that no matter how much time there is, no matter how one thinks about it, there is always
going to be enough.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And in the next stanza, time slows down again: ‘In the room the women come and go / Talking of
Michelangelo’. While it also serves to remind the reader of the setting, this phrase stops the poem in
mire. Despite the fact that time is rushing in the last stanza, here time has slowed down; nothing has
changed, nothing is quick. Therefore, can it be considered that time is only quickening in Prufrock’s head,
that his worries are accelerating time in his own head, but not temporally? It could certainly be seen as
another idea to the you-I schism.

This line also serves to enforce the idea of keeping conversation light, airy, and without feeling. Thus,
Prufrock alone seems to have feelings, thoughts; Michelangelo, here, is used as a placeholder for
meaningless things. It could have been replaced with a hundred other things, and the effect would have
still been the same: Prufrock is external to the conversation, external to the world, and the conversation
therefore is reduced to nothing more than a word.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Prufrock’s overwhelming emotions come to full appearance in this stanza: we can take his insistence that
‘there is time’ as an attempt to convince himself that there is no need to rush into action (even though,
as stated before, the repetition of the word ‘time’ renders it almost the opposite). Here, we are also
shown what Prufrock is doing: he is outside looking in (again, the pervasive symbolism of the fog-cat),
and trying to decide whether or not to enter this party where other people are concerned with
conversations that do not apply to him (‘in the room the women come and go / talking of
Michelangelo’). This is the crux of Prufrock’s emotions: emasculation, terror of the unknown, and an
indecisiveness to whether or not he should dare. ‘Do I dare / Disturb the universe?’ asks Prufrock, and
then reassures himself again that ‘in a minute, there is time’, once more giving his decision a sense of
heightened anxiety.

It is interesting to know that Prufrock himself is fragmented: we do not have a complete image of him,
but a half-image of his morning coat, and the collar buttoned to his chin, a modest necktie, and thin
arms and legs. The bald patch implies that he’s middle aged, but it is more given as a symbolic measure
of his embarrassment and nerves than it is as a physical descriptor.

J. Hillis Miller had an interesting point to make about the temporality of Prufrock, and whether or not
Prufrock actually manages to make himself go somewhere. He wrote: “In another sense Prufrock would
be unable to go anywhere, however hard he tried. If all space has been assimilated into his mind, then
spatial movement would really be movement in the same place, like a man running in a dream. There is
no way to distinguish between actual movement and imaginary movement.” We can see his point in this
poem: there is no indication that Prufrock ever leaves whatever view he has of the party. He could be
anywhere, we are not told where he is. We are told only that there is ‘time’.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

Once more, evidence of the passing of time gives us the idea that Prufrock is one of those men who
drinks about sixteen coffees a day. ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’, implies a solitary,
workaholic existence, implies that there is no other marker in his life with which to measure, that he is
routine and fastidious and not prone to making decisions outside of his comfort zone.

Also, the line ‘for I have known them all already, known them all’ helps us again to understand the
Prufrock is perhaps the most insecure man to ever walk the planet. He convinces himself not to act on
what he wants – which, presumably, is to go to the party – but to remain steadfast and distant, looking
into a world that he is not part of.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

Mutlu Konuk Blasing wrote: “Prufrock does not know how to presume to begin to speak, both because
he knows “all already”—this is the burden of his lament—and because he is already known, formulated.”

The phrase ‘sprawling on a pin / when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,’ shows the inactivity that
currently thwarts Prufrock, shows the way he is suspended in animation, and in time. Once more, there
is the fragmentation of people, the idea that everyone but Prufrock is a ghostly reimagining, the only
thing that he allows himself to think of, the only important thing to Prufrock.

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Prufrock’s agony over addressing the woman at the centre of the poem is evident here: he knows that
she exists, he knows who she is, he thinks of her in terms of arms and eyes and bracelets, but he cannot
approach her. ‘Is it perfume from a dress / That makes me so digress?’ Prufrock is self-aware enough to
know that his attempt of keeping back will not make him happy, but he has no idea where to begin
articulating what he means to the woman at the centre of his thoughts.

He is terrified to speak to the women he sees because he feels he will not be able to articulate his
feelings well enough, he does not think that they will be interested in him, and his crippling shyness and
insecurity therefore keeps him back.

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

‘Lonely men’ could very well symbolize, in a very overt way, Prufrock’s own situation.

Also, the description provided of the world is characteristically bleak, existing only in dusk and smoke.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Prufrock reduces himself to an animal, lived-in and alone, sheltered at the bottom of the dark ocean. An
astute reader might point out that his existence, as it is expressed in the poem, is not much different, but
for one thing: Prufrock’s awareness of his own loneliness is what is causing him torment. An animal at
the bottom of the ocean – an inanimate object like a ‘pair of ragged claws’ would not be aware, and
therefore would not be insecure, and would not be shy.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

Prufrock’s skill with language is perhaps brought best to the forefront here. We can see that he knows
very well how to speak – in his own mind. It is just the trauma of voicing aloud these thoughts that is
stopping him.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all.”

Paired back to one of the earlier stanzas, here is another set of words that are almost violent: ‘to have
bitten off the matter with a smile / to have squeezed the universe into a ball’. Here, Prufrock fantasises
that he has had a change of heart, and gone to speak to the woman at the centre of the poem, picturing
himself as Lazarus (thus showing both academic and biblical learning) come back from the dead, i.e.
Prufrock overcoming his crippling shyness.

David Spurr wrote, on these lines in particular: “To have “bitten off” the matter, in addition to its hint of
blunt force, would constitute a positive reaction against endlessly idle talk; squeezing the universe into a
ball would counteract the world’s tendency to fall apart and to spread itself out like yellow fog; finally,
the act of rolling it toward some overwhelming question at least imparts direction to the movement of
the universe, even if the actual destination, like the question, remains unclear. The idea of proclaiming
oneself a prophet “come back to tell you all” implies a power of linguistic discourse equal in magnitude
to the physical act of squeezing the universe into a ball. Once more the idea of language joins with
images of purpose, only this time in such hyperbolic fashion that the ultimate failure of discourse strikes
one as inevitable: “That is not what I meant at all.””

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

There is such a romantic overtone to this imagery that it seems almost impossible for Prufrock not to
know how to approach the woman at the centre of the poem; however, we know very well that there is
still no sense of movement within the poem itself. At this point, Prufrock almost seems to have raised his
spirits enough to attempt to speak to the women at the centre of the pome.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

And then he loses the urge, once more, reduces himself again to the part of the fool, shrinking himself
down from the heroic stature that he has built up in the previous two stanzas – that of Lazarus, and
Prince Hamlet, romantic and wordy and good at speaking his mind – to a fraction of his former self.

From the same David Spurr: “The speaker’s failure to master language–“It is impossible to say just what I
mean!”–leads in this case not to a statement on the inadequacy of words themselves, but rather reflects
upon the speaker’s own impotence. In a poem so obsessed with problems of speech and definition, to
have failed with words is to have lost the war on the inarticulate: the speaker as heroic Lazarus or Prince
Hamlet is suddenly reduced to the stature of an attendant lord.”

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Prufrock’s fire and fury and rage, the most ardent emotions that were present in the last few stanzas, are
reduced now to nothing. Once more, he shrinks away from the challenge of speaking his mind, of
speaking to the woman, and continues to destroy his own fledgling self-confidence by creating an
imagery in the reader’s mind so absurd that we perhaps start to share in his own view of himself. Once
more, there’s the presence of women – unattainable women, in this case symbolized by the mermaids,
with the power to ruin Prufrock’s entire world (‘till human voices wake us, and we drown’), and there is
the imagery of Prufrock viewing himself, now miserable and old, white-flannel trousers, reduced to the
inactivity that is rendered throughout the poem in such a way that he wonders ‘do I dare to eat a
peach?’

Historical Background

Eliot’s poem can be sourced from his book Collected Poems 1909-1962 and also viewed in
full here. Roger Mitchell wrote, on this poem: “J. Alfred Prufrock is not just the speaker of one of Eliot’s
poems. He is the Representative Man of early Modernism. Shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually
retarded (many have said impotent), ruminative, isolated, self-aware to the point of solipsism, as he says,
“Am an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two.” Nothing revealed the
Victorian upper classes in Western society more accurately, unless it was a novel by Henry James, and
nothing better exposed the dreamy, insubstantial center of that consciousness than a half-dozen poems
in Eliot’s first book. The speakers of all these early poems are trapped inside their own excessive
alertness. They look out on the world from deep inside some private cave of feeling, and though they
see the world and themselves with unflattering exactness, they cannot or will not do anything about
their dilemma and finally fall back on self-serving explanation. They quake before the world, and their
only revenge is to be alert. After Prufrock and Other Observations, poetry started coming from the city
and from the intellect. It could no longer stand comfortably on its old post-Romantic ground, ecstatic
before the natural world.”

This poem was set to music, and became a six-movement act. It has since been immortalized in popular
culture in everything from books to Simpsons episodes.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot: SummaryThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one of
the first remarkable poems of the city man and is also the first notable poem of T.S. Eliot. Prof. Pinto hails
the poem as a landmark in English poetry because it marks a complete break with the 19th century
tradition. Eliot presents the despair and passivity of a middle-aged man, Alfred J. Prufrock.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

He is in love, but his love song is never sung, He meditates too much and his cowardice is his Achilles'
heel. He is haunted by the problem whether he should reveal his love to the lady and he is undone. The
poem is typically not of the 20th century but, of all ages. It deals with the emotional frustration and
despair, hollowness of human beings living at any period in history.

Eliot's Love Song does not sing in praise of love. The title of the poem raises our expectation that in this
poem we shall hear how a lover lays bare his heart at the feet of his beloved. But nothing of this sort
happens in the poem. The title of the poem is ironic. The point of calling this poem a Love Song lies in
the irony that it will never be sung; that Prufrock will never dare to voice what he feels".

This poem is an investigation of the disturbed consciousness of the typical modern man who is
overeducated, powerful, anxious, and emotionally artificial. The speaker of the poem, Prufrock is
addressing a lover, with whom he would like to somehow consummate their relationship. But he cannot
“dare” an approach to the woman: He starts hearing the remarks others make about his weaknesses. He
becomes conscious of his growing age and unkempt clothing. He rarely thinks of himself and cannot
enjoy even a peach. He does not have the courage to do anything in life except thinking and thinking. At
the end of the poem, he hears the mermaids singing for each other and he surely knows they won’t sing
to him.

A close reading of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

Article written by:Seamus PerryThemes:Literature 1900–1950, Capturing and creating the

modernPublished:25 May 2016

The speaker of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is trapped in his own mind, so full of hesitation and
doubt that he is unable to act. Seamus Perry explores the poem's portrayal of paralysing anxiety.

Who is Prufrock?

T S Eliot wrote this poem while he was in his early twenties: he later recalled beginning the poem while a
student of philosophy at Harvard University in 1909–10, and he finished it while travelling for a year in
Europe, in Munich and Paris. But you could not say that it was a young man’s poem exactly: later in life
Eliot, when asked, said: ‘It was partly a dramatic creation of a man of about 40 I should say, and partly an
expression of feeling of my own through this dim imaginary figure.’[1] The poem is extraordinarily
original, but it does have some anticipations. Of all the poets of the Victorian period, Eliot later
remarked, the only one ‘whom our contemporary can study with much profit is Browning’: that is Robert
Browning (1812–1889), who was famous for writing poems as monologues in the voices of assumed
personae. Eliot’s poem is not very much like a Browning poem, but it does grow from the example of his
dramatic practice: it is through inventing a prematurely middle-aged persona, as he came to see it in
retrospect at least, that Eliot found a way of articulating something about himself.

He once referred to that thing, in private, as a ‘complex’. Presumably with some degree of levity, given
the nature of the authority upon which he was commenting, Eliot wrote ‘The Prufrock Complex’ next to
these words from the report of a palm-reader: ‘when faced with a personal problem, any prolonged
contemplation of probabilities merely produces hesitancy and indecision’. Prufrock is one of the great
inventions of the modern literary imagination: he has become an archetype for the ‘complex’ of over-
scrupulous timidity. He is a man paralysed by an overwhelming anxiety about the possibility of getting
things wrong: his judgement has such nicety and fastidiousness that it never arrives at decision, let alone
action. So there is, as it transpires, a certain irony in the manner in which the poem opens:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table …

The language of the opening line is decisiveness itself, and involves a determination to get going, along
with a firm address to another person; but the sense of purpose is quickly dissipated as the speaker
becomes absorbed in a lyrical evocation of the light effects of dusk, which in turn then gets waylaid by
the sheer oddity of the simile that seems to come, unsolicited, to his mind to describe them. The play
between the belated romanticism of an evening ‘spread out against the sky’ and the incongruous
modernity of ‘a patient etherised upon a table’ purposefully sets different sorts of world in juxtaposition:
the poetical and the medical, the lyrical and the hospital; and this juxtapositional method will be the
main way the poem gets to work. The title of the poem announces that method as it braces the romance
of ‘The Love Song’ against the precise social formality of ‘J. Alfred Prufrock’. Eliot said later in life that he
chose the name because it sounded ‘very very prosaic’, though it probably sounds more eccentric than
prosaic to most readers, even a bit of a joke name; but Browning offered examples of characters with
bizarre or even cartoonish names (Bishop Blougram, Mr Sludge, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau) who
revealed within their poems a seriousness of predicament that we might not have expected to find. Eliot
begins his poem with what is by any standards a linguistic misjudgement and might seem just a comic
stroke – to include of all things a pronominal initial in the name, as one might on an official form, in the
title of a love poem; but he then goes on in his portrait of indecisiveness to make the fallibilities of such
uncertain judgement seem terrible as well as comical. ‘No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to
be’, Prufrock announces towards the end of his poem, distancing himself from the character in literature
who has most often (rightly or wrongly) been seen as making dithering about a decision the source of
great tragedy. Prufrock’s experience of the ‘overwhelming question’ falls short of that kind of grandeur.

Prufrock, and other observations by T S Eliot

Front cover to T S Eliot’s Prufrock, and other observations published by The Egoist in 1917.

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Going nowhere

‘Let us go’, Prufrock repeats, and again, ‘Let us go’; but the movements of the poetry have already
established by the end of the first verse that we are occupying a consciousness that is destined to go
nowhere very much. And in fact the epigraph to the poem, which comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy,
has already introduced the idea of going nowhere as a key theme in the poem’s orchestration. (It is from
Canto 27 of the Inferno.) In the passage, Dante, who is touring Hell, has begun to converse with one of
the inhabitants, Guido da Montefeltro, who is initially reluctant to respond; but on the reasonable
assumption that Dante must be in Hell for all eternity too, he begins to speak:

If I thought my answer were to one who ever could return to the world, this flame should shake no
more; but since none ever did return alive from this depth, if what I hear be true, without fear of infamy
I answer thee.
For Eliot to begin his poem with a voice from the depths of Hell is to create another of the poem’s
formative juxtapositions, and invites the reader to make out a connection: the world of the poem is
nothing to do with medieval Catholicism, but rather genteel New England society – a place of tea cups
and coffee spoons, collar pins and neckties, musical soirées and perfumed evening dresses – but
conceivably another version of Hell for all that. The inescapability of social conventions and the stifling
prescriptions of polite decorum constitute a new kind of infernal entrapment.

For Hell is a place you don’t leave: Dante was unusual in coming back to tell the tale. The opening
urgency of Prufrock’s ‘Let us go’ dwindles in the short second verse to the desultory-sounding to-and-fro
of the unidentified women, who ‘come and go / Talking of Michelangelo’. That couplet also comes and
goes, returning about 20 lines later, but with no improved sense as to who the women are, let alone
what they mean to the speaker. Like the cat-like fog that rubs itself lazily upon the cityscape, the poem
curls about and about, its beautifully drifting, self-interrupting sentences repeatedly putting off the
moment of coming to a full stop. Often, instead, they come to a question mark: ‘Do I dare / Disturb the
universe?’ It would be wrong to say that these questions are ‘rhetorical’; they are genuinely expressions
of perplexity: ‘So how should I presume?’

The form of the verse co-operates in this universe of non-ending by avoiding the different sorts of
progressiveness that would come from using stanzas, or blank verse, or heroic couplets. Eliot’s poem has
no regular rhyme or rhythmical patterning: it is in free verse, vers libre, though the effect here is
anything but a launch into untrammelled freedom, as some of the proponents of vers libre at the
beginning of the 20th century liked to claim. ‘Vers libre’, wrote Eliot in 1917, the year that ‘Prufrock’ was
published in the volume Prufrock and Other Observations, ‘is a battle-cry of freedom, and there is no
freedom in art.’ Vers libre involves abandoning the ‘comforting echo of rhyme’, he said; but his poem
does not do without rhyme at all, just without regular rhyme, as in a rhyme scheme. Eliot wrote
beautifully about the possibilities of this, as though in oblique commentary on his own poem: ‘There are
often passages in an unrhymed poem where rhyme is wanted for some special effect, for a sudden
tightening-up, for a cumulative insistence, or for an abrupt change of mood.’ You could find examples of
all of those in the poem, and other effects besides, created by rhyme’s interruption into an unrhymed or
unpredictably rhymed space: ‘Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, / Have the strength to force the
moment to its crisis?’

Eliot is drawn, too, to leaving Prufrock caught up in rhymes that are no rhymes but merely repetitions,
enacting the way he is victimised by the insistently reiterative movements of his own anxious mind – as,
say, when he can’t dislodge the accusation of being too ‘thin’:
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

Prufrock and the women

‘They’ are probably women: Prufrock’s anxieties revolve partly around the imponderabilities of time, but
chiefly around a fear of women, and a fretfulness about the humiliations of social encounter that rises
here and there to a kind of suppressed hysteria: ‘When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall …’. In a
Browning monologue there is usually an implied interlocutor (whom, of course, we do not hear) with
whom the speaker is interacting in one way or another; but just to whom Prufrock is addressing himself
is not so clear. The ‘you’ addressed in the first line seems to evaporate quite soon, as though he (is it a
‘he’?) never were in real life; and the ‘you’ of ‘you and me’ that comes later – ‘here beside you and me’
and ‘some talk of you and me’ – does not feel like the same addressee, or indeed an addressee who is
really present at all. Prufrock is talking to a ‘you’ inside his own mind, and she is a part of some back-
story to the poem’s frustrated erotic life which is kept almost entirely under wraps. The poem has
moments of rich sexual response and, as though not knowing what to do with them, they no sooner
arise than they are diverted into the sidelines of a bracket or an aside: ‘Arms that are braceleted and
white and bare / (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)’ The closest we come to
disclosure is the studiedly neutral double reference to ‘one’: ‘one, settling a pillow by her head’, and
again, ‘one settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl’. In his portrait of this ‘one’, she appears
unimpressed by his efforts to ‘say just what I mean’; but he is using her imagined indifference as a reason
for abandoning an effort in the first place.

'"Prufrock and other Observations": A Criticism' by May Sinclair, from the Little Review

In her review of Prufrock and other Observations May Sinclair addresses how T S Eliot’s poetry
challenged conventional public taste.

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distributed further.

The poem comes to a close with Prufrock lapsing gratefully back into a lovely fantasy of ‘sea-girls’ singing
their mermaid songs in the deeps: Prufrock eavesdrops upon them, momentarily at ease, it would seem,
now that the fulfilment of his desire is completely out of the question. But the last line conveys that
there is no escape from the poised chat over the tea cups: ‘Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’
The poem does not mock Prufrock’s dreamy romanticism, which it voices very beautifully; and while it
could hardly be called a resolute ending, it is the right one. The poem ‘does not “go off at the end”’,
protested Ezra Pound, Eliot’s friend and early champion, to an editor who had wanted something more:
‘It is a portrait of failure, or of a character who fails, and it would be false art to make it end on a note of
triumph.’[2]