The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

a poem by T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock  is a poem written by T.S. Eliot in 1915. The text is a dramatic monologue.

A dramatic monologue is a narrative technique developed during the Victorian age, in which consciousness expresses itself as if on a stage. The poet adopts a “dramatis persona” and makes us listen to his/her own voice.

T.S. Eliot makes use of such technique in line with Modernist principles:  subjectivity is in the forefront as the protagonist of the poem is talking to his consciousness.

Right from the title the reader notices that Eliot himself refers to the text as a song, so he should expect attention to rhythm and rhyme scheme and relevance of sound.

T.S. Eliot uses free verse as a structuring principle; the poem is made up of the juxtaposition of scenes which creates a dramatic effect. Such technique is typical of Modernist fiction.

J. Alfred Prufrock is the main protagonist of the poem. He is a middle-aged man, which is generally the most frequent character in Modernist production, since adult people have already lived most of their life and so they reflect on it. The man is not a hero, but an antihero (as generally happens in Modernist fiction): he is constantly undecided on what he should do; he doesn’t know if he should give himself away and so he keeps delaying.

Hence, the themes of the song  are love (as the title suggests), time and consciousness (as in all Modernist production), fear (of what other people think of us) and weakness.

The text starts with an epigraph taken from Dante’s Inferno (Canto XXVII) where Guido da Montefeltro reveals his sins to Dante knowing that nobody else will hear about them. The quotation (quotations are frequently used in Modernists’ inter-textuality) sets the mood of the poem and creates an intimate relationship between the reader and the speaking voice which is going to deal with the most inner feelings of the man.

The first scene presents Mr Prufrock while talking to  his consciousness. He is trying to convince himself to go and “make his visit” to his beloved. Eliot makes a description of the evening when the scene takes place.  He uses images that appeal to the senses as it generally happened in imagist poetry. He compares the sky to a patient etherized on a table.  The atmosphere is decadent and overwhelming, also the streets seem to go nowhere and recall the unwillingness of the man to take a decision and to act.

At Line 18 the poet inserts two  lines which can be defined as a refrain (typical device of songs) that is repeated all over the text. Eliot uses an ironic tone to criticize such mediocre attitude to culture: everybody is always talking about things they don’t really know even if they presume they do.  Culture is becoming more and more worthless.

The following scene deals with the weather. The description of the “yellow fog” (typical figure of English literature) seems to display the behavior of a cat that “rubs its back upon the window-panes…”.  The atmosphere is getting darker and darker and the reader feels involved in the numbness of the situation. 

In the next section, Eliot introduces the theme of time. The word “time” is repeated many times all over the scene. “There will be time” is the most frequent expression, and it is also what Prufrock himself says to his consciousness.  He wants to convince himself that there is no need to act immediately and that he can keep delaying a hundred times before finally declaring his love, and showing his own true nature. Meanwhile he can still “prepare a face to meet the face he meets”.

The theme of time is developed again in the following scene. Mr Prufrock even convinces himself that there will be Time also TO WONDER if he dares doing what he hasn’t the courage to. He imagines himself descending the stairs in the future, old by then, and he imagines also the reaction of those watching and judging him.  Such consideration makes the reader understand that Mr Prufrock is getting old and he is aware of that.  He still asks to himself if he dares “disturbing the Universe” with his small action that is so important to him, and keeps postponing.

In the next scenes Mr Prufrock is making an assessment of his life, the people he met, “the evenings, mornings, afternoons”, the moments he spent with different women (sitting in a Café while drinking a coffee, he can measure his life in coffee spoons), the voices he heard, the eyes that stared at him while speaking with ” a formulated phrase”. And now it is his turn to show his true feelings, to formulate his own thoughts. He feels “sprawling on a pin” just like an insect to be analyzed into deep, “wriggling on the wall”. He feels stuck and doesn’t know how “to spit out”, to declare all his emotions and habits. The fact that he has been dating many different women (with their arms, “that are braceleted and white and bare”) makes him wonder what is different now that he keeps digressing. The repetition of the expression “how should I presume” makes the reader understand that he is not capable of giving himself away. Maybe he doesn’t feel worth enough for the woman he loves and so he thinks it would be against the Universe to declare himself.

Prufrock asks to himself what he should say, if he finally decided to reveal his feelings, how should he begin? Maybe he should start describing his loneliness, and fear of being alone, like some men he once saw, going at dusk through narrow street…?

His insecurity is so strong that he preferred being a “pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas” without feelings or worries, instead of  being involved in such situation, and having to make a move.

In the following scene, the man tries to imagine if he would have the strength to confess his feeling to the beloved, an evening, after a tea and some sweets. But the man already knows that he would never find that strength. He is not a great man, he is “no prophet” and his love in nothing important to the world. He believes that his faith is in loneliness and the “eternal Footman” has already decided that for him. But “And in short, I was afraid”: such expression is the turning point: it reveals the true reason of Prufrock indecision. He doesn’t really believe his destiny has already been decided, he is only scared about the possible results of his action.

Further in the text Prufrock realizes that it would “have been worth it, after all”. He could have “bitten off the matter with a smile”, and slightly put forward the question. “It would have been worth it”, he keeps repeating , he states that he can’t say what he means, and indeed, it is not easy to cope with the subsequent images that flow through his mind and consciousness. He is sure that if gave himself away, someday the beloved woman would say “that is not what I meant, at all”, and so everything would become useless (maybe this has happened before to him).

The man shows, then, a total lack of self-confidence: he states once again that he is not a great man, he is not Hamlet, he is an attendant lord, a tool, “glad to be of use”. He defines himself “almost ridiculous, almost, at times, the Fool”, then he returns to the image of himself as an old man, the passing of time while he doesn’t move.

Eliot concludes the poem with some various images about mermaids. Mermaids could probably refer to the women’s universe: Prufrock has heard them, has seen them, but he seems to be parted from such world. He can only dream of being with them and “linger in the chambers of the sea”; reality makes him drown, just as Montefeltro, to his personal hell.

As already said, Eliot makes great use of images that appeal to senses in the text, in order to involve the reader and make him share Prufrock’s feelings. The text relies heavily on metaphors, similes, symbols and references spread all over the text: the meaning of some of them is almost obscure.

Rhythm plays an important role in the poem, many are the rhymes and the repetition of some expression (such as the refrain, and a great amount of other short sentences) serves to create a certain cadence to the text, rendering the poem similar to a complaint about life, and introducing a sense of overall paralysis and the absolute indecision of the main character.