THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock



The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The title of Eliot's poem immediately puts an end to any real suggestion that it has a romantic side. Indeed, the very name of the character implies that he is a rather obscure fellow, in fact a total non-entity.

As the first stanza begins, the opening two lines seem fairly innocuous in their description of the evening sky, but any further thoughts the reader might have regarding what is - after all - supposed to be a love song, are soon dissipated by the flat reality of line 3:

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

This line is far from romantic, at least in the normal sense of the word, and the following lines which allude to 'muttering retreats', 'cheap hotels' and streets which 'follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent' do little to equate the poem with love and romance of any description. The final question towards the end of the verse provides the reader with very little in the way of an explanation, and one gets the impression that Prufrock is experiencing some form of inner turmoil.

Eventually, the flowing pace of the poem becomes sharply lessened as two very interesting lines follow the end of the first verse:

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

By employing such a method, Eliot has introduced the inadequacy of his character, cutting short Prufrock's diatribe about the vulgarity of his existence and using a simply rhyming couplet in order to smear his character with an image of pure despair. Such despair, in this case, is clearly born of inaction and Prufrock is wondering how on earth he can possibly impress upon middle-class society.

The second verse makes use of an intriguing metaphor in order to draw a comparison between the evening fog and a cat, particularly by using appropriate imagery relating to the behaviour of such a creature. Eliot also uses specific words and phrases in his comparison: 'rubs its back upon the window-panes', 'rubs its muzzle', 'licked its tongue into the corners of the evening', 'made a sudden leap', and even 'curled once about the house, and fell asleep'.

In the third verse, the poem begins to adopt a classic metaphysical pattern, with much attention given to the concept of 'Time'. Prufrock is somehow trying to rally himself towards a specific destiny, and time certainly plays a large part in his life. He begins by reassuring himself that there will be plenty of time to achieve that which he desires, and

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

But he soon realises that there will also be

time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions.

It is as though he is not very confident about his own abilities. The way this verse is broken into two parts is identical with Prufrock's own split-personality. One can imagine Prufrock trying to sound both assertive and determined on the one hand, but accepting ...