The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a dramatic monologue by T.S.Eliot. Right from the title we should expect a song with a love theme but this is not a traditional love poem at all. The intelligent reader on the other hand will understand from the title the importance of the rhythm and of the rime scheme.
The poem is not organized into stanzas because it is a typical modernist poem. It is consisting of the juxtaposition of the scenes, as it generally happens in modernist fiction, because T.S.Eliot wants to focus the attention on consciousness that becomes the structuring principle of the poem. The most important themes are: consciousness, time of conscience, fear, weakness and anti-heroism.The speaker of this ironic monologue is J. Alfred Prufrock is a middle age man who, like many of his kind, feels isolated and incapable of decisive action.
Right from the start T.S. Eliot introduces his poem with an epigraph of Dante's Inferno, in which Guido da Montefeltro deals with the problem of other people opinion. The epigraph is represented by the dialogue between Guido da Montefeltro and Dante, the first one believes that Dante is dead, and so Dante won't be able to return to Earth to report his story. In the same way Prufrock will express his most private feelings and emotions. Prufrock's fears are about his decision to declare his feelings to his lover or not: what frightens him most is a possible refusal.
The song is about a man who has not got the courage to declare his love to a woman and about his inability to form every kind of relationship with other people. This is revealed by the absence of the word "love".
The poem stars an invitation for Prufrock , who divides himself in two characters : him and his conscience "you and I". Eliot's technique reminds Freud's theory about the unconscious. The expression "you and I" is used in the first, fourth, tenth, twelfth, thirty-first and last lines. They are two different parts: conscious and unconscious. As the poem continues the intelligent reader understands that they are two different parts of Prufrock's identity. They reflect an inner conflict between passion and timidity. He is powerless "like a patient etherised upon the table"
After then there is the refrain "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo" it underlines how Michelangelo's art is treated by superficial and common conversations, people do not give importance to anything, this refrain introduce the "leit motiv" of the text.
From line 15 to line 19 Eliot describes Prufrock's inner conflict between passion and timidity through the use of metaphors : "the yellow fog..the yellow smoke..lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys" which have the aim to evoke Prufrock's feelings. The image of the fog, in a October night wants to represent those things are hidden and don't allow Prufrock to convince himself to do what he had decided to do. Autumn is a frequent topos in English poetry, in relation with the fog and the night and the description of motels and restaurants which express a society that has lost its values because of a materialistic perspective, which also manages Prufrock's life, and because they only think to judge other people.
In the second scene there is an anaphoric structure in order to provide the sense of oppressiveness in fact the word "time" is repeated eight times. The verb tenses are in the future, which divides realty from expectations. He repeats that "there will be time", but at the same time he understands that he is growing old "How his hair is growing thin!", "How his arms and legs are thin!". In fact time begins to change Prufrock who now has "a bald spot in the middle of my hair" and he's not only influenced by time but also he's afraid of people judgement : "they will say "How his hair is growing thin", "but how his arms and legs are thin"". He is aware to have passed a life without meaning. Prufrock is aware of condition of man when he considers all the phrases he said useless, said just to conform to society. Tension increases when Prufrock imagines other guest criticizing him. He has accepted an invitation to a social occasion at the house of the woman he loves. His intent is to declare his love to her. In order to encourage himself to make the effort, he imagines the situation. He thinks about the actions to do when he arrives.
now that he is old he knows how to face life "the evenings, mornings, afternoons", but even he has this knowledge, he is unable to make his declaration. It is a matter of fact that Profrock postpones actions, he measures his life following a quantitative criteria "with coffee spoons" but when love meets his life he is afraid to act.
Guests are described trough symbols "men in shirt-sleeves", "throwing off a shawl", "I have known the eyes already", "I have known the arms already", "perfume from a dress", "human voices". Eliot used an important figure of speech: metonimia that consists in considering a part of something for the entire. This reflects the human condition: man feels fragmented, this consideration, it is not only highlighted by the use of metonimia, but also by the structure, which reflects the condition of the human being.
He discovers himself afraid, he is not a prophet, he accepts his destiny with resignation, "I am no prophet therefore he doesn't know about his future. After all the small things lived with the person he loves, nothing remains to him but his sadness. At the end of two paragraphs he repeats twice "That is not what I meant at all, That is not it at all". He makes also an extensive use of allusions; for example, he refers to "Michelangelo", "Lazarus" and "Hamlet". In fact there is a scene where Prufrock reflects on the sense of life. He admits "I am not Prince Hamlet" and has he not found the "Holy Grail". He is not Prince Hamlet, but he prefers to be a servant "glad to be of use". Therefore he well represents the apathy which kept Modern man becomes an anti-hero because he knows what he wants, but he is afraid and he is not able to face his situation. He reveals himself as a modern hero. Prufrock is an anti-hero also because he doesn't reach is object of love. Eliot wants to make the reader understand the problems of the Modern Age. Problems that in Prufrock do not seem to find a solution. Now old, Prufrock becomes the metaphor of "every-man" and waiting death everyday, "till the human voices wake us, and we drown".

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tentor Martina, Viezzi Sara
cl.5^A