"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a dramatic monologue written by T. S. Eliot. Right from the start the intelligent reader should expect that it is a song about love so that there will be an importance in sounds and in rhyme scheme.
The poem is made up of the juxtaposition of a lot of scenes which create a dramatic effect. So there aren't stanzas and the rhyme scheme is irregular. Eliot doesn't write in free verse but he uses different poetic forms in an unique song. One of the most important characteristic of the song is the use of reframes, for instance: "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo". There is also a use of repeated questions such as " how should I presume?", and exclamations such as "that is not it, at all". The writes uses intertextuality with an epigraph taken from Dante's Inferno. It wants to warm the reader that the topic, which the main character is going to discuss about, is very important and secret, so the reader will have not to talk about it with other people.
The main character, who is the speaker too, is J. Alfred Prufrok, a common middle aged man. This type of character is generally the most frequent in Modernist literature: a middle aged man, in fact, has just lived a long part of his life so he can reflect about it. Prufrok is in love with a woman but he hasn't the courage to make a declaration and to risk. He is pathetic, timid, always worried about what people think about him, isolated, obsessed and pessimist; he isn't able to take a decision.
The main themes in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" are: love, because the main character loves a woman and is tormented by his terror to make her a declaration; time, because Prufrok has just lived a consistent part of his life and he reflects about his past and present experiences; consciousness, because the reader perceives it with the comprehension of time; anti heroism, because Prufrock isn't a hero, he doesnn't act and doesn't realize his desires; fear about what people think about us, because Prufrock continually worries that he will make a fool of himself and that people will ridicule him for his personal characteristics.
Let's analyse "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It starts with the epigraph taken from Dante's Inferno which we have already talk about. The first scene starts with an invite: the speaker invites the listener to walk with him into the streets on an evening that seems a patient etherised on a table because there is nobody and the only presence of life is on one-night cheap hotels and dirty restaurants (maybe places in which the speaker usually go). There is an overwhelming question between the speaker and the listener (about Prufrock's life).
The first scene is kept together with the second with a reframe: "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo". It underlines women's behaviour: they talk about important themes even if they are only chatting. The second scene is about the setting in which is Prufrock or the streets she always sees out of the window. The writer describes the atmosphere comparing the fog to a cat. The third scene well describe Prufrock's psychology: his life is made up of visions and revisions. The reader perceives his consciousness in this scene: there's no hurry, there will be time to decide and then to act; Prufrock is living with dreams. In the fourth scene Prufrock says there will be time to wonder if he dares to make a declaration to the woman. He feels inadequate in front of people's eyes. What will people think of him? Does he dare to approach a woman? He will think about it and make a decision, then reverse the decision. In the fifth and the sixth scenes we have another perception of time: the speaker realizes the his past experience are the same he is experiencing at present; people is the same, he has already known evenings, mornings, afternoons, days are the same. Prufrock has also already known women like the one he is in love with but he wonder how he could approached with his lover (the next two scenes). In the tenth scene the time passes peacefully. It is as if the evening is sleeping. Should the speaker sit down with someone and have dessert so live? The reader can perceive Prufrock's sufferance and fear.