T .S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

      T.S.Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" presents an effete, upper class Englishman stifled by  a sterile, unnatural society as a symbol of Modern life which Eliot contrasts to previous, healthier times through allusions to earlier art, literature, and religion--Hesiod, Michelangelo, Marvel, Chaucer, Shakespeare and the Bible.  The protagonist is talking either to himself or another person, probably male, as he makes his way to an upper class tea party, suffers at the tea party, then wishes for an alternative existence.
     The title "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock is ironic.  The name suggests a stuffy banker or similar personality. Furthermore, the poem is about the  incapacity of modern man to commit himself to love or for that matter to communicate on any level as an individual.
 The epigraph, a quotation from Dante's Inferno further sets the tone.  On being asked his identity by Dante, one of Hell's prisoners wrapped in a flame answers, feeling assured that no one ever leaves hell alive.  The epigraph suggests that modern life is a hell that no one ever leaves alive; it saps the natural man.
     The first stanza suggests that the protagonist and perhaps a companion are going out for the evening.  Since some of the themes of the poem are loneliness and lack of communication, it would be very appropriate for the poem to be a soliloquy with the protagonist speaking only to himself.  However, according to the editors of the  Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry , Eliot specifically denied this interpretation.  He said that the 'you' of the poem was an "unidentified male companion."  The poem   works either way, though I prefer the former interpretation regardless of Eliot's denials.  The first three lines echo the effect of the title.  The first two lines" Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky" sounds promisingly romantic but ends flatly in the image of a "patient etherized upon a table."  Apparently in this city the evening is half dead, lonely, isolated, unaware.  The effect of the third line is furthered by the scenes encountered along the way to the tea party; "half-deserted streets," "one night cheap hotels," sawdust restaurants with oyster shells."  The streets meander like an argument structured to lead to a desired conclusion, in this case "an overwhelming question."  This question is avoided in l.10 but is asked in various forms later in the poem.  The question seems to be--Should I assert myself and reach out to communicate with  another human being on a more than superficial level?

     The short second stanza gives a quick, but telling picture of the social affair Prufrock is going to attend.  It is repeated later in lines 34-35 when the reader is more able to interpret its meaning.  Therefore, I will postpone comment at this time.

     The third stanza points a picture of a polluted smog-ridden city, probably London.  Prufrock depicts the cat-like smog, "yellow fog" and "yellow smoke," prowling slowly through the streets, rubbing its back and muzzle on whatever it encounters, curling around a house after making "a sudden leap."

     The slowness of the cat-like fog's movement leads into the fourth stanza's treatment of time.  The poet appears to be thinking of Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress" which he alludes to again later in the poem.  The first paragraph of Marvel's poem tells how he would court his sweetheart if they "Had. . .but world enough and time. . . ."   The second paragraph points out that time is short and after death it's too late and the third paragraph urges immediate intense action.  The gist of Marvel's poem and other carpe diem poems is that life is wonderful but there is limited time in which to enjoy it.  The import of the fourth stanza of "Prufrock" is completely opposed to that of Marvel's poem;  it suggests that there is plenty of time for the trivia that clutters up a life where real people never meet, only faces that have been carefully prepared.  Life's triviality is suggested by the "hundred indecisions and  . . . visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea."  People do not have that many important visions; visions of importance usually come singl y and are not easily revised.  One imagines the protagonist here worrying about such unimportant matters as what color of necktie he  should  wear and what his opening line of conv ersation should be at the party.  The women he will meet are denigrated in that their chief function is to be decorative and keep superficial conversation rolling; they "lift and drop a question on your plate."  The allusion to Hesiod's celebration of farm work in the phrase "works and days" juxtaposes an image of fruitful labor against the superficial, in the nonlabor of upperclass women. There's plenty of time for all these trivialities and no one would suffer if they never occurred.

    The fifth stanza is a repetition of the third.  Again the protagonist has a quick mental glimpse of the social event he's moving toward.  The women are conversing about appropriately intellectual subjects such as the art of Michelangelo as they drift in and out of the room.  Evidently the conversation is not enthralling enough to make them stay.  The irony of these lines lie in the contrast between the passion and endeavor of a Michelangelo who suffered for his art (for instance in the painting of the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back on a scaffold for many months) with the women whose main task is making idle conversation.  The women who are talking about Michelangelo as an appropriate subject for a teaparty have no real appreciation for the total commitment to life and art which he represents.

    The sixth stanza finds Prufrock at his destination, contemplating the stairs which will take him to the upperstory drawing room where the party is being held.  He worries, "Do I dare?" which relates back to the "overwhelming question "pushed aside in lines 10-11.  After worrying about his physical appearance (although well dressed he has a balding head and thin arms and legs), he completes the question, "Do I dare disturb the universe?"  This question is asked in various forms until we receive an answer in line 111.  I take it to mean-- Should I reach out and really communicate with people rather than go on being a  superficial shell of a man?

     He argues against a positive answer to the question in the seventh stanza where he notes the past quality of his life.  How can he "presume" to "disturb the universe" when he has trivialized his life, dissipated his energies at social parties which have no point--"measured out . . .[his] life with coffee spoons."  Besides he knows the nature of the people at the party (the inflection of whose voices are caught in the phrase "dying with a dying fall" perhaps suggesting a false intimacy) and he doubts their receptivity.  Perhaps they wouldn't know a real person if they saw one; if he tried to really communicate, they wouldn't understand what he was doing.

    These people are further depicted in the eighth stanza.   They do not know one another as a real person but as a "formulated phrase," a stereotype.  He uses the image of a bug collection and himself as a specimen "pinned and wriggling" to a display on a wall to express his feelings at being objectively regarded by those at the party as an interesting specimen of a type.  Who would want to draw attention to himself, to really reveal himself--"spit out the butt ends of . . . [his] days and ways" to such an audience?

     The people are further distinguished in the ninth stanza as women toward whom Prufrock has a sour grapes attitude.  Close observation reveals that these elegant women actually have hairy arms.  Nevertheless, they have some effect on him; he is unable to order his thoughts being diverted by the smell of perfume.  It is significant that he treats the women not as whole people but as parts or appearances that attract and deceive, seen in this stanza as the synecdoches "arms," "perfume" "dress," and earlier as "hands that lift and drop a question on your plate. . . .," "eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase," "faces that you meet," and "voices dying with a dying fall."

     After a pause indicated by ellipsis, he explores the possibilities of self assertion in stanzas 10 and 11.  Perhaps he could depict his personal loneliness by speaking of the loneliness of the people he sees in his walks in the streets.  He evidently rejects this thought in lines 73 and 74.  He cannot communicate any better than a lobster or a crab--" a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

    After another pause again indicated by ellipsis, he goes back to the sensation of slow moving time in lines 75-78 which he treated earlier particularly in stanza four.  Given so much empty time should he at any given moment assert his own personality, ll.79-80.   Since Prufrock has talked mainly about women in the previous passages, the lines "have the strength to force the moment to its crisis" takes on sexual overtones. While lack of communication seems a general theme of the poem, inability to have a valid sexual relationship is treated more specifically. If a person is unable to have a deeply sexual relationship,  he is isolated from much that is worthwhile in life--natural deep emotions and intuitions as opposed to rationally based superficialities.  Prufrock is unable to make a move toward a woman, or more generally people, because he fears that he would appear ridiculous.  The self-consciousness we have seen in the previous stanzas holds him back.  He has "suffered and prayed" but he is no John the Baptist alluded to in lines 81-83.  In fact he is the type of person who servants ridicule behind their backs.

    His failure to make use of the moment is indicated by the past tense of stanza twelve.  Here we see that if he did assert himself, people in general, and the woman he would like to address in particular would not understand and he would appear more ridiculous.  The trivialities and superficialities of life are indicated by "the cups, the marmalade, the tea. . .the porcelain. . .some talk of you and me."  After such an existence one has dissipated too much emotional energy to act fully, to assert one's self, to find meaning in life.  He alludes again to Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress" in lines 72 and 73.  In that poem the narrator asks his mistress to join with him in "roll[ing] all. . .[their] strength and all. . .[their] sweetness up into one ball, And tear[ing]. . .[their] pleasures with rough strife/ Through the iron gates of life."  This image is one of delight and vigor it is totally foreign to Prufrock's world.  If Prufrock made such a suggestion to a woman or tried to speak as Lazarus did of his knowledge gained through dying and returning to life(ll.94-95), he would simply be put off or misunderstood(ll.95-97.)

        The thought and structure of stanza twelve is echoed in stanza  thirteen.  More of the trivialities that clutter life, specifically upperclass life are listed in lines 87-89.  What would be the effect of asserting his individuality, his specialness separate from his background suggested in the previous lines, if it would be received with indifference or lack of understanding.  He uses the image of a magic lantern throwing "nerves in pattern on a screen" to suggest the accuracy and intensity of the statement he wants to make.  However, such a statement only makes one more vulnerable to the indifference of others.  No one wants to spill his guts only to have them sniffed at indifferently.

     The conclusion indicated by ellipsis begins with an answer to the "overwhelming question"--should he assert his individuality?  He now says "No!" followed by yet another reason, a reason related to others we have seen.  He is too unimportant, too bridled with self-consciousness of his lack of worth to ever "disturb the universe."  He is not "Prince Hamlet," not a leading character in the play of life.  While Hamlet eventually acts after much deliberation, Prufrock never will.  He is an ineffectual character used only to help make a crowd or play a "Fool."  The character described in lines 114-119 suggests the character Polonius in Hamlet who pompously gives out advice in words full of rhetoric to the king and to his son and ends up accidentally stabbed behind the curtains in the queen's bedroom, being mistaken for someone of greater importance.  "Full of high sentence" is a quotation from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales describing the clerk, a relatively ineffectual character.  (Norton's Anthology of Modern Poetry)
 Having answered the "overwhelming question" with a resounding "No!" Prufrock looks forward to a fruitless old age.  He "shall wear the bottoms of his trousers rolled."  This line could suggest the following of fashion according to The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, or the loss of height incumbent on old age.  He will become balder and will vainly "part. . .[his]hair behind" in an attempt to hide it.  Far from questioning whether or not to assert himself, he will wonder if he "dares to eat a peach."  This line works in several different ways.  The elderly have to worry about fresh fruit because of digestive and denture problems.  The peach also suggests sexuality.  Fruit in general is sexual being the ripened ovary of a plant while the peach is more specifically so because of its flesh-like color, the softness of its flesh, and the downiness of its skin.  If he fails to sexually assert himself in the prime of his life, how much less can he hope to do so in old age?
 Beginning with line 122, Prufrock fantasizes about walking on the beach.  The beach, ocean, and mermaids are as far removed as possible from the stifling atmosphere of an upper class tea party.  He has had a vision of a wild free world where mermaids will not sing to him because of his lack of importance; nevertheless, his fantasy continues.  Now he is in the sea, having been wreathed by the mermaids.  Eventually the tea party, his actual present, breaks in and he suffocates "drowns" in its stifling atmosphere.  There is much irony in Prufrock's drowning by human voices instead of by the fantasized sea, the natural world of natural emotions.
     In this poem we find a product of an early stage of Eliot's career in which he wrote poetry that has many of the devices found in later poems such as The Wasteland--lack of transitions, use of allusions suggesting attitudes and contrasts, etc.