Learning Paths » 5B Interacting
The love song of J. Alred Prufrock is a poem by T. S. Eliot published in Chicago in June 1915.It presents a dramatic interior monologue of a frustrated man.
At the beginning of the poem there's an epigraph from Dante's Inferno, canto 27. This is the moment in which Dante is going to meet Guido da Montefeltro first and then Ulysses ( they are both condemned to the circle of fraudolent, in Hell).The use of the epigraph reveals Prufrock as the antithesis to Dante, who represents an heroic figure, differently from the man of the poem. Indeed Dante is a man who's not afraid to risk and challenge himself, while Prufrock is a scared man who doesn't dare to declare his love. ("Do I dare / Disturb the universe?") Prufrock is constantly searching for his heroic part but he fails, and therefore he condems himself to isolation.
After the epigraph, Prufrock refers to his conscience "let's go you and I". He wants to have a walk in the evening and talk with it. The poor Prufrock could be considered the hero of inaction who lets his life to flow without doing anything to stop it, and overall without daring. The word "dare" could be considered a key word, since T.S Eliot often repeats it along the poem. Furthermore it is the word which best represents Prufrock. He never dares and this influence his whole existence, which is a life as a marginalized and excluded person. The world surrounding the protagonist is degraded, vulgar and grey. Indeed, the description of the world and its women who walk talking about Michelangelo is a metaphor for the vulgarity of society. Prufrock would like to give himself away, but he can't, and he measures his life with teaspoons. He thinks there's time to declare his love "There will be time" but there's no much time. Prufrock gets older and older, his hair become gray and his legs thiner, and still he doesn't manage to say anything. At the end he say's "And in short I was afraid." Prufrock doesn't listent to his song anymore, and the mermaid won't sing for him, he lost because of fear.