The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot is a dramatic monologue. It consists of an initial epigraph and of 21 stanzas organized freely without an order or precise number of lines.

As I already said, the text starts with an epigraph taken from Dante’s Divina Commedia, more specifically from the XXVII canto of the Hell where the protagonist is Guido da Montefeltro. He tells Dante his story because he is sure his word wouldn’t be heard by anyone in the world of the living people. So the reader can find an analogy between the content of these verses and the Love Song.

First of all, J.A. Prufrock speaks to himself: it is a dramatic monologue addressed to a silent listener. The protagonist is the dramatis persona of the “author” that narrates his experience and thought is first person and wonders about life. The text has no organization but it follows the technique of the stream of consciousness where there are a lot of ideas, memories, feelings that are no linked together, there are no logical order and connections. The verses are free and the poet use juxtapositions. In the text the objective correlative is also used: an emotion can be described only through a chain of events  or situations. 

The lyrical I is pent-up in the modern world, he has no recourse. He represent the crisis of the subject: he is searching something (let us go) and he is accompanied in his journey of sense by a listener that is the You that sometimes comes out.

The scene is set in a dark city in the night that could also have a symbolical meaning: the dark city may signify illness, inability to act. The protagonist cannot take decision, he cannot act, he feels unsuitable. There are no time references and all around him seems to be paralyzed. Time is at the center of investigation, the behave of a men depends on his though about time.

There are also underlined the boredom of a normal life in the modern world. “After, after, there will be time” seems to focalized the attention of the new concept of life that Prufrock is living: he doesn’t  tolerate a life full of mediocrity but he is afraid to give him self away and on what people think about him.

At the end of the text there is a comparison between the lyrical I and a character of the traditional literature: Hamlet. They have a lot of things in common but there are only one substantial difference. Hamlet can take his own decision, he is ready to die for his ideal of life. Prufrock always tries to find and excuse to don’t do what he should do.