Analysis of The Love Song of J. A. Prufrock – T. S. Eliot 

Like the title says, the poem is a love song and its protagonist is J. Alfred Prufrock.

It starts with a quotation from Dante’s Inferno, the confession of Guido Monferrati who thinks nobody will ever know his sin outside of hell. The quotation is linked with the protagonist because Prufrock too thinks nobody will ever know about his love song.

In the first stanza it is written “Let us go then, you and I” but Prufrock is not talking to someone but instead his interlocutor is his conscience. So the poet uses the interior monologue technique.

Then he protagonist starts his walk. The evening is described like a half conscious patient and the places he sees are squalid. But he does not stop and tells to his conscience to go on walking.

Also the chorus In the room the women come and go /Talking of Michelangelo refers to the squalid places and to the decadence of human being. Eliot is, in fact, a snob who finds terrible that ignorant people discuss about art.

Onwards the fog appears and it spreads everywhere. It is described like a cat which is rubbing against the window. Also the yellow fog recalls to the bleakness of the places.

In the following two stanzas Prufrock affirms that there is still time left. It refers to the fact he never had the courage to speak with the woman he loves and asks continuously to himself if will have the courage to do it one day. Then he thinks about people surrounding him, people who do not suspect anything, who do not even know him well and are only able to see a few changes of his aspect.

Subsequently, the protagonist thinks about how he lived until now: he had always measured everything in his life in order to not change his life, in order to keep his routine. So he knows already the mornings, the afternoons and the evenings because they have never changed up to now. Then he asks himself how could he change his day but there is still time to think about it and to change idea once again.

Afterwards, in the tenth stanza he thinks about the woman he loves: he thinks he could have had a tea with her in order to have an excuse to talk with her. But then he thinks once again he would have been scarred of bringing such a change in his life. But he thinks again that it would have been a good idea to tell her about his feelings, it would have been worth.

But in the next stanza he once again thinks that it is not for him to be so brave to confess his feelings. He thinks about himself like an attendant. He was not born to lead a scene, he could have opened one and then disappeared behind the wings.

In the twelfth stanza he thinks about the rushing of time and that he is becoming older and older: he thinks about how he will look like.

He affirms he has heard the siren singing but they were not talking about him. The song of the sirens refers to him who has been caught by love but since the theme of the song was not him, he is preclude from confessing his feelings.

The love song finishes with Prufrock admitting he has lost too much time thinking about what he could have done and change idea over and over.

In conclusion, the theme of the love song is the continuous postpone and the inability to act because of the fear of changing the equilibrium in ones universe.