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SBergagna - Lve Song of J.A.Prufrock analysis
by - (2012-03-26)
Up to 5C - T.S. Eliot's Output and Metaphysical Poetry
Love Song of J.A.Prufrock is a dramatic monologue. It is divide three line stanzas and the rhyme scheme of the poem is irregular and with free verse. The three line-stanzas are rhymed like a Petrarchan sonnet but they have anti-romantic and pessimistic contents, for example in line 125, he writes "I do not think they will sing to me". The first stanza begins with the epigraph with which Eliot wants to modernize the form of the poem by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock's interiority and isolation. Indeed the epigraph to this poem, from Dante's Inferno, describes Prufrock's ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never betray to the world the content of Prufrock's present confessions. Than the poem is build up with the technique of fragmentation and juxtaposition of the sequences, so the reader can better focus on the Prufrock's points of view and his thinking.In conclusion, Eliot uses his own experiences to write The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but he extrapolates his sensations into the neurotic Prufrock, his alter ego. Since a poem spoken by Prufrock might have been unimaginative, Eliot chooses the device of a dramatic monologue to make his observations of the human condition. His use of the epigraph works well with the monologue to allow Eliot to write in the first person. It is more rewarding for a reader to make sense of a difficult poem, or a poem that makes its point in a very thin manner, than it is to simply state an observation in plain language. Eliot makes a simple observation and keeps the reader interested by using unusual techniques that are both thin and effective.