The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock is a modernist poem written by T.S. Eliot in the 1915. It belongs to the poems collection Prufrock and Others Observations.

The composition is a dramatic monologue presenting a moment in which the narrator, who is the story’s protagonist too, expresses his own feelings and thoughts revealing information about him.

The main topic of the dramatic monologue is the personal situation of the protagonist.

The words “Love Song” seem defining a narrative poem. Indeed The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a narrative story but it is also a poem because it presents poetic feature as repetitions, rhyme and metaphors.

The central character of the poem is a bald, insecure middle-aged man. He is the narrator and the speaker at the same time.

He expresses his feelings of inadequacy and his fears connected to his love purposes; indeed he is unable to make a decision and to take risks, especially with women.

Mr Eliot opens the poem with a quotation taken from Dante's epic poem (27^th chant of the “Inferno”) associated to the Count Guido da Montefeltro character. Both Prufrock and Count Guido hide a secret that they are not able to reveal: Count Guido fears infamy while Prufrock is afraid of the uncertainty of the situation he is living which makes him unable to risk.

In the first stanza the speaker invites the listener to walk with him into the streets on an evening that seems to be an anesthetized patient lying on a table of a hospital. The comparison suggests that the evening is lifeless. The speaker and the listener walk through lonely streets passing shabby establishments which remind the speaker of his own lacks.

It follows the refrain which alludes to the vanity and the presumption of modern people to speak about high topics in a shallow way. Mr Eliot wants to convey the lack of importance that modern world reveals toward important issues.

In the second stanza it is presented the yellow fog while it is licking the landscape. The verb “to linger” refers to Prufrock situation: as the foglingered upon the pools, Prufrock feels inferior and unable to act decisively.

There's no hurry, the speaker tells himself in the third stanza. He is sure that there will be time to decide and to act, there will be time to do many things and there will even be time to think about doing things. The repetition there will be time reveals again Prufrock’s indecision: he is not able to come to a decision, only to think about what it will be and to postpone his choices.

Furthermore the repetition signs the passage of time, a concept coming out from the whole poem. Prufrock is realizing he is getting older but this leads him just to think about what people will say about him instead of exhorting him to make a decision and to risk.

The following stanza seems to present Prufrock’s justification for his non-acting. Behind his presumption of having known everybody and everything, Prufrock wants to provide to himself an excuse for his own uncertainty.

This sort of justification is followed by a meditation Prufrock gets about the possibility of what he could have been that appears as the exact opposite of what he really is. The image of a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas makes clear what Prufrock wants to be but he is unable to become.

In the next sequence emerges again the concept of the passing time; time is running and the speaker has been seeing his opportunities going away and the eternal Footman snickering. The listener can reach that Prufrock is now wondering about his life: he is conscious he have had the chance to act but he admits to have been afraid of his actions and their consequences. He has flickered so now he sees the death (figured by the Footman) getting closer.  

Absorbed by his thoughts and his own justifications, Prufrock begins to consider if it would have been worth of realizing his proposes, thinking of the consequences that his actions would have brought if he have had the strength and the bravery to acting.

The repetition would it have been worth leads the reader’s attention to Prufrock’s persistent insecurity.

The last lines underline Prufrock’s awareness of being pathetic and too much cautious. He knows he is not the Prince but just the attendant lordor maybe the Fool, too. He understands not to be the protagonist of his proposes and, in consequence, of his own life.

Prufrock sees he is getting older: this lets him realizes he have been lost in his mind for long time without connections to the real life. He has drowned in his own thoughts, he has lived in his dreams instead of in the reality and now, when he wake up from his drowsiness, he realizes it is too late for acting.

Mr Eliot’s poem rises as a critic toward the inability of acting and the weakness of being unable to get over our fears, without realising our dream and proposes and expressing our feelings.

The poem deals with many topics. Loneliness and alienation are expressed by Prufrock’s being a pathetic man whose anxieties and obsessions have isolated him. Indecision comes out from the whole composition throughout Prufrock’s resisting to making decisions for fear that their outcomes will turn out wrong. Prufrock’s concerns that he will make a fool of himself and that people will ridicule him underline the sense ofinadequacy. At least, the tendency of Prufrock to see only the negative side of his own life and the lives of others reveals the pessimism spreading in the poem