-     The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock -

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a dramatic monologue in which Alfred Prufrock dialogues with his consciousness. Right from the title the intelligent reader understands it is love poem: it deals with love and it is a song. Eliot chooses the dramatic monologue because he wants to focus the attention on consciousness: he uses the just-apposition of scenes as it happens in fiction. The song is composed of both the interior monologue (Hamlet) and the dramatic. It is written in free verse.

The protagonist of the song is a common middle aged man, because a common middle aged man is generally the most frequent character in modern poems. Generally a middle aged man, who has already lived a lot of his life, reflects about life.

In this song Alfred Prufrock loves a woman and he wonders if he should reveal his feelings.

Right from the start Eliot uses an Epigraph , an intertextual quotation, to prepare the reader to listen something new; it is taken from Dante's Hell.

The structure of the song is made up by the just apposition of scenes which creates a dramatic effect.

In the first scene the reader finds a metaphor of the evening which is compared to an etherized patient: the evening is paralysed, unable to move. The following lines contain images which express decline and ugly aspects of modern cities, and evoke unpleasant sensations.

In the refrain there is a metaphor "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo" which expresses women's stupidity: they talk about Michelangelo who represents something too high for their levels.

In the second scene the evening is described through the movements of a cat: as fog hits against the window, in the same way a cat rubs its back upon the window.

The third scene is about time: Eliot uses a lot of repetitions to express the sensation of time that goes by.  Prufrock wonders if he should reveal his feelings to his lover before taking toast and tea.

The fourth and fifth scenes go on talking about time and the fear of th effects of it: indeed Prufrock is reflecting about time's passing, and in the sixth and seventh scenes the protagonist wonders, with a lot of doubts, if he should declare or not.