The Love Song of John Alfred Prufrock is a poem written by T. S. Eliot in 1905 or 1906. The poem deals with J. Alfred Prufrock, a middle-aged man who is not able to take decisions as he fears the consequences of his actions. The poem starts with a quotation from Dante's Inferno, made to represent that our world is the heir of him. Also, T.S.Eliot thinks that our society has lost the sense of signs, especially their symbolic meaning.
The poem starts with the idea of the streets, that organize our life and that are boring. As the streets end the refrain starts, in order to give unity to the poem. Eliot doesn't like ignorant people to talk about geniuses like Michelangelo in a superficial way. The setting of the story is the period between autumn and winter. This is showed by the presence of the fog, which seems to have human features thanks to sensual language used to describe it. In the same stanza Prufrock seeks the inside to feel safe.
Also, the concept of time is extremely important in the poem as it's measured by everyday life rituals and by his mind and represents for Prufrock the endless possibility of making a choice. In fact, he's willing to make an action, but he fears the consequences of it and therefore, he knows that his decision doesn't matter anything. In a while are taken decisions on which the result is already known.