RESPONSE TO THE POEM

A Response to the Poem “The Love Song From J.Alfred Prufrock”

A Response to the Poem “The Love Song From J.Alfred Prufrock”

Introduction

This paper will be providing a response to the poem “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by T.S. Eliot. It is a dramatic and heart-breaking monologue of a depressed and insecure man who craves attention (Bercovitch, 2003). In this poem, Eliot examines rejection, loneliness and fear. Eliot's aim in using the epigraph as a language device may have connotations to being in hell, suggesting hopelessness and effectively representing Prufrock's situation of suffrage in relation to his social and cultural isolation.

Discussion

The first point for discussion is Animal imagery that stands as a dominating form of figurative language; and clearly justifies Eliot's purpose to effectively epitomize Prufrock's social and cultural isolation. The quote: “I should have been a pair of claws/scuttling across the floors of silent seas” represents the comparison of Prufrock's to merely an insignificant, bottom feeding crab that scuttles sideways and never gets anywhere (Nordgren, 1994). He feels he leads an un-achieving, unfulfilling life; and he does not even consider attempting interaction with people at the expense of revealing himself; and being perceived ineptly - as he will still end up on the very bottom of the depths (of society).

Prufrock's complete and utter inability to communicate and interact with people and women in particular is shown through the way Eliot uses the line: “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” as if he is disembodying them, merely referring to them as 'faces'. It is all based around the insecurities that shape his dismal and disheartening sense of self, which Eliot successfully achieves in showing relation to the versatile theme of the individual's disconnection and distancing from society and people in general.

The repetition of phrases, meaningless in them is the realization of Prufrock's procrastinate nature. “There will be time, there will be time” demonstrates Eliot's use of the repeated phrase to make clear the torment and tribulations Prufrock's experiences in coming to terms with the past, present and future (Mitchell, 1991).

The second poem for the discussion is the use of assonance in: “And time yet for a hundred indecisions/And for hundred visions and divisions” follows on a similar pathway, demonstrating Prufrock's an extreme case of indecisiveness which is representational of the socially and culturally isolated individual, that Eliot manages to specify ...