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

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem written by the Modernist poet T.S. Eliot and published in 1915. As J. Joyces's works it is a denunce of the decaying of contempory society and also an analysis of the subjectivity of a tormented human being.
Starting from the title, the reader can recognize immediately two important elements: the main character and the topic. The main character is J. Alfred Prufrock and after reading the poem the reader understands he is a middle-aged man who does not act because he is afraid of the consequences. As for the topic, the poem deals with Mr Prufrock's love for  a lady, but it is the pretext to analyze the ineptitude of a man who is paralyzed by his fears.
Before the beginning of the poem, T.S. Eliot inserts an epigraph drawn from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, precisely from Inferno, Canto 27. The words are pronunced by Count Guido da Montefeltro who is condemned to stay in hell, but for this reason he can present his feelings without fear of infamy. Therefore J. Alfred Prufrock, like Count Guido da Montelfeltro, will express his condition freely because the poem is a monologue in his consciousness.
Looking at the layout of the text, the reader understands it is a poem: it is composed of eighteen stanzas with a different number of lines  and it presents a refrain in the first part.
In the first stanza the narrator invites the reader to walk with him through empty and squalid streets during the evening that is compared to an etherized patient (in the text "streets" rhymes with "retreats" and there is a contrast between the loneliness of the ones and the sounds in the retreats"). The imagery indicates the evening is listless and lifeless. Also feelings are not important in this society: the narrator refers to one-night cheap hotels, where people can have only a physical love. The setting the narrator presents are squalid and they represent that society.
The stanza is followed by two lines that form a reframe, typical of the ballads and of the songs. Some women are discussing the Renaissence artist Michelangelo in a room, but they want only to show their culture and in this way they represent the loss of the pure culture in a brutalized world ("go" rhymes with "Michelangelo" underlining its loss of importance).
In the second stanza the description of the evening goes on. It is a foggy evening and the haze moves like a cat. The language used refers to senses and creates a motionless and immaterial atmosphere. The scene, which seems to be represented by a close place, reflects Mr Prufrock personality, that is his indecision and his shyness. The first and the second verses of the stanza begin with the same words and in the three following verses there is an alliteration at the very beginning of them.
Time is the central theme of the third stanza. Mr Prufrock talks with himself and says there is time to do a lot of things, both to think and to act but, as a matter of fact, he uses his time only to reflect, to think and to recise ("indecisions" rhymes with "revisions"). Moreover he is afraid of reveal himself and he creates a new face in order to hide his true self ("street" rhymes with "meet").
After the reframe, the writer analyzes more deeply the theme of the paralysis and of the fear. Mr Prufrock is blocked, he asked himself if he have to act or not. Furthermore he doubts of himself and is afraid of people's opinion about him.
His rasignation emerges also in the following stanzas, that are linked by similar questions: "How should I presume?". The stanzas are characterized by many questions, which underline his indecision. Mr Prufrock thinks all people are the same, uninteresting and without substance and he considers himself ordinary, mediocre and weak. Moreover he is unable to reveal all his sufference in a society that is based on conventional formulas. For these reasons he knows his decisions will not lead him to anything and so he loses the will to act and in particular to declare his love. An important element is that he has measured his life with coffe spoons: the ripetitive action of the tea is a way to organize his time and life.
He reflects also about women, who he considers all equal, so he thinks to have already known all of them.
In the following stanza there is again a question. There is again the evening and Mr Prufrock probably is talking with the woman he loves: he is walking in a narrow street and he sees the smoke of men's pipes. They are alone like him and they are looking out of a window: they do not do anything important and they are living their life in a passive way, not acting like Mr Prufrock.
Mr Prufrock knows that he is not really living and that he is not behaving like a man and for these reasons he says that he should have been a see creature that lives in a silent deep sea and that does not need a consciousness like a man. Again he images a dark waste place where no one could judge him.
In the following stanza the narrator presents the evening as an asleep cat (as he does in the second stanza), smoothed by someone (probably by the fingers of the woman he loves). The evening is lying on the floor: it may symbolize the time Mr Prufrock is wasting in his life. In confirmation of this, in the following verses he presents his life, made only of stupid and useless things: tea, cakes and ice creams. But all of it makes a question in Prufrock's mind: after all this waste of time and trifling life, should he have the strenght to change his inner crysis (in the text "crysis" rimes with "ices")? Mundane life only reinforce the immobility of it and his ineptitude into making decisions.
The man tried to escape from this reality: he cried many times and prayed and fasted. He thought that crying he would solved the immobility of his life and change everything as water washes everything away, but it is not the solution of a man, but a child's one. He has seen also his head on a platter: it is an allusion to the prophet John the Baptist who was beheaded, famous to have urged people to reform their life (that is what Prufrock should do). The eternal Footman represents Death and he is laughting of his trifling life (in the text "flicker" rimes with "snicker"). He is decaying and he is afraid by death because he knows that his life has been empty and he is full of regrets now.
The narrator goes on wondering about his life. The reader finds again the elements that characterizes the upper society: tea, marmelade, porcelain that represent also the emptiness of their lives. Mr Prufrock wonders if it is possible, after all these, to confess his lover his problems. He compares himself with Lazarus, who came back from deads' world: the metaphor recalls the epigraph taken from Dante's Inferno because what Lazarus says (that is what Prufrock would like to confess) is also what Guido will do with Dante.
Moreover he asks what would have happened if he had talked with the woman he loves, but the arguments would have been probably reduced to formulas, reducing important things into fool ones (in the text "all" rhymes with "ball"), without telling her what he really feels (that is Lazarus' and Guido's truth).
In the following stanza the narrator goes on wondering what would have happened if he had confessed her his love and if it had been worth of going deeper in their relationship, after the first encounters and the apparences. But he thinks also about what he would have done if the woman have told him that he had mistaken her intentions towards him. Mr Prufrock thinks again about what could happen but he does not act: he only thinks and this causes a paralysis in action.
The paralysis is deeper analyzed: the character goes on analyzing himself and to do this he uses images from Shakespeare's Hamlet (it emerges that Mr Prufrock is a man of culture). Hamlet is the symbol of the adolescient who can not decide anything, but Prufrock does not compare himself to the young and royal Hamlet, who can decide something at the end, but he compares himself to an attendant lord: he does not do anything by himself and he wants someone tells him what to do. This figure is Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet: as Prufrock says, he is only the person who advices the prince, full of sentences and obtuse. He appears ridicoulous because of his inability to act and he becomes only one of the people that follows someone without reasoning.
In the fifteenth stanza the writer shows where Prufrock's indecision arrives. Prufrock realizes he is growing old and he thinks to his old age and how he lived in a passive way. He thinks only how he will look like and the most little thing, as eating a peach, is put in doubt. He tries to focus his attention on fool problems, but he knows what the real problem is. In this stanza there is another reference to literature. He has heard the mermaids singing and this recalls Homer's Odissey; but, unlike Ulysses, Prufrock says that he is not sure they were singing for him as they have done for Ulysses, because he is not an hero. In the following verses the reader discovers Prufrock has followed the mermaids in their rooms in the sea: this underlines that Prufrock is not an hero like Ulysses (he did not followed them) but an anti-hero, subjected to fears and to weaknesses.
He says he has seen them in the sea and he compares the waves to hair. But they are only a dream and suddenly human voices bring Prufrock again in reality, that is compared to a sea where man drowns and can not face problems (in the text the colour of the seaweed, "brown", rhymes with "drown").