The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock was written by T. S. Elliot and it is a dramatic monologue in which Prufock is dialoguing with is consciousness.      

Right from the title the intelligent reader could expect something that speaks about love. It is a song, and therefore the reader focuses her/his attention on rhythm, rhyme scheme, and on the relevance of sound.                                                                                                                                                                         The dramatic monologue is introduced by an epigraphy which is taken from Dante’s Inferno. The voice is talking about itself and it speaks only because it knows that we do not tell anybody.                     

Starting reading the poem the reader can see that the song doesn’t follow the traditional scheme but it is composed by free verse and it is made up by juxtapositions of scene with creates dramatic effect.

In the first scene the intelligent reader soon realizes that what he/she is reading is not a common love song because of the simile in which Prufrock compares the evening to a patient that is about to undergo a painful surgery. In addition there are many personifications, in fact it is not the "retreats" that are "muttering," but it seems that way because they are the kinds of places where you would run into muttering people. Also, the nights aren’t actually "restless"; they make people restless. There is another simile in which twisting streets are compared to a "tedious argument" that makes people lost with confusion, so Prufrock invites the reader not to ask questions.

In the second scene there verses that are repeated in exactly the same form twice in the poem.

In the third scene is characterized by a strong rhythm due to the repetitions of words like “yellow” and “window-panes” in these lines is talk about a cat through a turn of phrase, it is never said directly that it is a cat, but you understand it by what it is doing.

In the next scene the "faces" are a synecdoche, in fact you don’t go out just to meet a face, you go out to meet the entire person.

In the following scene is repeated again, "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. "

The following lines clearly express the character of Prufrock and also the main themes of the poetry: the indecision and time. The men in spite of he knows that he hasn’t all life in front of him, he refers his decisions, convincing him that he will still have time. After that there is the characterization of Prufrock: his "bald spot" is a repeated symbol of his middle age, just as his nice clothes are a symbol of his relatively high social class. Eliot's choice of using a middle-aged man is not casual, rather it is generally the central carachter in Modernism because they reflect on their lives, focusing on consciousness.

In the next scene there is a metaphor in which Prufrock says that the spoons he uses to measure his coffee are like a "measure" of his life, as well. In addition the "dying fall" of voices from another room is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Count Orsino, one of the lovers in that play, refers to the "dying fall" of music that reminds him of his love. Therefore, it is ironic, when the voices Prufrock hears are covered up by "music from a farther room."

In the following scene there is another synecdoche, the eyes: they are a part of a person used to stand for the whole person. After all, eyes can’t "formulate," only a thinking person can do that. He uses the metaphor of a scientist examining an insect specimen to describe the way he feels under the gaze of those critical "eyes."

In lines 70-72 Prufrock returns to the setting of the beginning of the poem to give the imagery of a man leaning out of a window and smoking a pipe. Here we have the sad, honest man who realizes the jig is up and can’t even convince himself of his own stories. This Prufrock, who only lets his mask drop for a few lines at a time, is the one who admits that he should have been "a pair of ragged claws".

In the next scene Prufrock confuses the past and the future throughout the poem. in fact though the poem started in the evening, he goes back to the "afternoon," which blend into each other creating boredom and inaction. But some time has passed in the poem, because earlier he was talking about having tea, and now it seems he has already had tea. After that more time is passed in the poem, this time on a larger scale. He comes to realizes that "the moment of my greatness," the moment of his big chance at love, has  gone. His best opportunity for happiness is over. Now he only has death, "the eternal Footman," to look forward to.

In the following scene Prufrock likens himself to Prince Hamlet: he spends much of the poem acting like the notoriously indecisive Hamlet. But, in the end, he decides that even indecision is too decisive for him. No, he’s more like an assistant to a lord, a guy who does nothing but follow orders and generally acts like a tool. In fact in literature, Hamlet is a classic example of a passive character. He spends all his time thinking about whether to murder his uncle, and he never gets around to doing anything about it. But Prufrock is even worse than Hamlet. He’s more like an "attendant lord" who serves a king. Everybody is nice to him, but nobody respects him because he doesn’t want to cause trouble for anyone, including himself.

After that he realized all these things he focuses on his superficial appearance to cover up for the absence of deep feelings and emotions.

The poetry ends with some ocean imagery, including the singing mermaids and the sea-girls wearing seaweed. In one of the poem’s most creative metaphors, the white-capped waves are compared to "white hair”.