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DIacumin - T.S. Eliot's Modernist Poetry and Metaphysical Poetry - The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock - Analysis
by DIacumin - (2012-03-18)
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Right from the title the intelligent reader understands that the text is a song, a song dealing with love. As a consequence it requires attention to the rhythm, to the rhyme scheme and to the sound. It’ s a modern poem, there are not stanzas anymore. The free verse technique is used and the structure is made up of the juxtaposition of scenes, to improve the dramatic effect.  In fact the song is an interior, dramatic monologue between J. A. Prufrock and his consciousness. He is an common middle-age man and it is another typical aspect of Modern poetry. They are the most frequent characters, because they have lived and they are able to reflect about life. The reader understands that he loves a woman, but he is not able to give his self away. Prufrock wants to keep his secret, he is an antihero, and to do this Eliot starts the song with en epigraph: it is a quotation taken from Dante’s Inferno which suggests not to talk to anyone. His will is to have a close relationship with the reader. The first scene takes place in the evening, he feels “like a patient etherized upon a table”. He feels really frustrated by his situation and reflects about women as well: they speak about important themes as they were chatting (“In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo”). The evening is a metaphor used to explain again that his life is even closer to the end. In the second scene a cat is described in a typical October evening. A yellow fog covers everything, except inside the house. Than Prufrock repeats inside himself “there will be time” a lot of times: he has fear to talk to his loved woman and he tries to convince his self that he will have the possibility to try it again. The intelligent reader understands it is impossible: he is getting older, he is not going to live forever, he will die. The rhythm of the lines is deliberately irregular; it remembers again Prufrock ’s indecision. The frequent use of the chorus gives the layout of a song and make the suffering really evident. He is bald already, he is old and continues asking if he should dare. His action would need just a moment, but he is conscious not to be able to do it. He knows he had so many experiences in his life and should not be afraid just to give his self away: but he is and he does not know what to do, how to presume. In the 9th sequence Prufrock thinks about the arms of the woman he loves. They are “braceled and white and bare”: the description of the arms seems the one of a rich and really good-looking woman. In contrast to this beauty there are the light brown hair that could be noticed in the lamplight: this is a negative exterior aspect, but it seems to attract Prufrock more than the all woman body. Then he thinks that he makes this reasoning because of the perfume of a dress that maybe the woman wore when she met Prufrock. He fell in love because of this simple elements that distinguish the woman from the others. Then he thinks about the position they had: they lied on the table like a dead body and then they wrap about a shawl looking for some heat. Then it comes again the idea of the inability to act of the character. The two-line sequence reminds only that he has been paralyzed for all the time and he should have acted. In the 10th sequence he describes how he imagines her in everyday life when she goes to sleep. This image causes in Prufrock a very deep and powerful feelings he can’t describe at all because they are beyond description. They make him weeping, fasting and praying together order less in a confusing and aching way. There he watches death in all of his power and he feels very afraid because of the visions of the eternal Footman and of his head in a platter. The feelings are so strength that they evokes death in Prufrock’s mind, like he will going mad for this love.  In the next two sequences he thinks about the occasions he had and “would it have been worth it” to take them. There it comes out again the idea of English ritual of a toast and a tea together. The ordinary life is in contrast to what he would have had to do in the past. He think that he should have taken action with a smile and then maybe the solution  would have come from the universe. The intelligent reader understands that it is strange to refer to universe: Prufrock thinks that only a little love could change the universe balance and he had not to do that because it could bring incalculable damage for all the Earth. This is only a justification to not to act when the only problem is in the character’s mind.  In the 12th sequence Prufrock list in the first lines what he likes mostly to describe what he is feeling, concluding he can’t describe it because it is impossible to say. He thinks that the only way is a magic lamp that could threw the nerves in patterns on a screen. He concludes the sequence referring to ordinary life: a person comes home at evening and he thinks about the day it passed; he thinks about what he do and about that he didn’t say to someone what he really wants to say. This action refers evidently to Prufrock’s situation, a man that is unable to act and is paralyzed from his feelings. The last part of the poem starts with a reference to Hamlet. Prufrock is unable to act as the Prince and he thinks how he could change this situation when one of the most important and valuable Prince of the history hadn’t. Prufrock is like an attendant lord that is good only to swell a progress. He has an emarginated rule in the world even he is full of high sentence. He becomes ridiculous because of his paralysis and he is at times the Fool of the situation. The sequence pins down a very low self-confidence of Prufrock. Then he thinks about he is growing old and his hair are falling and he thinks he should stop thinking about the woman and make things that the old man are used to do and walk upon the beach. In the beach he heard one time the mermaid singing but not to him because he is not important. They were riding seaward on the waves as he rid the time when he was young. The mermaids attract people as the woman made with Prufrock and them both swept away them and drown them.