The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock was a monologue written by T.S. Eliot and published in 1917. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man.

From the title the intelligent reader assumed that the poem is addressing to a lover and seems that Prufrock, the poem's speaker, wants to have a relationship with her.

As mentioned the main character is Alfred Prufrock, after reading the poem, we can realize that he is a middle-age man, educated an intelligent but who is paralyzed, he doesn't act because he is afraid of the consequences he is incapable of asserting his emotions and desires.

He precedes his monologue with a quotation from Dante's Inferno. Dante, while journeying through hell, meets Guido da Montefeltro, who is wrapped in flame and suffering eternal torment for sins he committed on earth. He confesses his sins on the assumption that Dante, a fellow prisoner of hell, cannot return to earth with the damning information he is hearing and besmirch Guido's reputation. Prufrock's love song is a similar confession of a soul in torment, though Prufrock's sins are errors of omission and inaction rather than of commission.

Regarding the structure the poem is divided into eighteen stanzas with a different number of lines; the rhyme scheme is irregular. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of sonnet form, particularly at the poem’s conclusion..

The time is evening and "you" is an invite from the narrator to walk with him through empty and squalid streets during the evening that is compared to an etherized patient.

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.

"There's no hurry", the speaker tells himself in the third stanza. He is sure that there will be time to decide and to act, there will be time to do many things and there will even be time to think about doing things. The repetition there will be time reveals again Prufrock's indecision: he is not able to come to a decision, only to think about what it will be and to postpone his choices.
Furthermore the repetition signs the passage of time, a concept coming out from the whole poem. Prufrock is realizing he is getting older but this leads him just to think about what people will say about him instead of exhorting him to make a decision and to risk.

 The following stanza seems to present Prufrock's justification for his non-acting. Behind his presumption of having known everybody and everything, Prufrock wants to provide to himself an excuse for his own uncertainty.

There are a lot of self doubt and hesitation interrogation of himself. "Do I dare?" "How should I presume?" "How should I begin?" "Shall I part my hair behind? "Do I dare to eat a peach?" How much derring-do is such a man capable of? He also can't risk eating a peach. He imagines the women exchanging comments on him.

An important element is that he has measured his life with coffee spoons: the repetitive action of the tea is a way to organize his time and life.

In line 94, he compares himself to Lazarus, the name of a biblical characters who rises from the dead. But there will be no return for Prufrock from the spiritual grave that is his meaningless existence.

Our final image of this archetype of anti-heroism is of Prufrock walking along the seashore, trousers rolled to prevent their being splashed. His hair is carefully combed over his bald spot. The thinness of his legs and arms cannot be concealed by morning coat and trousers. Michelangelo, Hamlet, Lazarus, would have plunged into the waves to hear the song of the mermaids and to drown in the pleasures that comes with life's embraces. Prufrock is awakened from his dreams only to "drown" in the dry sterility of a wasted existence.