Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Critical analysis of j alfred prufrock
Allusions used in the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Allusions in the love song of j. alfred prufrock
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Critical analysis of j alfred prufrock
Not all love songs are about love. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Elliot is a tale of a lonely and tormented man living a life of regret. In order to establish his self-deprecating and depressed attitude, Prufrock’s dejected tone and insecure characterization are established through the use of diction, imagery, and allusion. J. Alfred Prufrock is an insecure man living in his own head. Throughout the entire poem, he contemplates truly living life but continuously puts it off for a later date by saying “there will be time” as he believes be will be ridiculed by his society. He is apprehensive about every decision he makes and usually chooses the safer choice. His insecurity and fear of rejection are what prevent him from doing …show more content…
Prufrock’s countless descriptions of his society and surroundings as desolate and dying showcase his hopelessness for a new beginning and hopelessness for his life. He describes himself as living in a life that is “like a patient etherized upon a table,” (9). A patient who is etherized is completely numb and waiting for an operation. Operation is a last resort so this patient is just waiting for death. The patient has no hope like Prufrock does not have for his life. Prufrock’s descriptions of the world around him as “deserted” and “cheap” illustrate his disdain and dying hope for change. He talks of “certain half-deserted streets, ” (10) and “restless nights in one-night cheap hotels,” (11). Because of the negative connotations that such words carry, the reader can see Prufrock’s pessimistic view of the world around him. In the sixth stanza, Prufrock says he knows “For I have known them all already, known them all; have known the evenings, mornings...the voices dying with a dying fall,” (55-58). He knows how that he and everyone in his society are letting life pass them by, only made significant by small, irrelevant tasks. His use of the word “dying” show his defeatist feelings towards life, accepting that he will die without truly …show more content…
This insecurity is depicted through his physical descriptions of himself. He describes himself as having a “bald spot in the middle of [his] hair” (40) and “how his arms and legs are thin” (44). He does not portray himself in a positive light and fears the scrutiny and judgement of those around him as he has experienced it before. Because of these undesirable physical qualities, he questions if he should even leave his house. Another example of Prufrock’s self-deprecation is his comparison of himself to a bottom-feeding creature. He says “I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling around the floors of silent seas,” (79-80). He degrades himself in such a way that he believes he is worth no more than a crab living at the bottom of the ocean, with no purpose or place but at the lowest of the
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is about a timid and downcast man in search of meaning, of love, and in search of something to break from the dullness and superficiality which he feels his life to be. Eliot lets us into Prufrock's world for an evening, and traces his progression of emotion from timidity, and, ultimately, to despair of life. He searches for meaning and acceptance by the love of a woman, but falls miserably because of his lack of self-assurance. Prufrock is a man for whom, it seems, everything goes wrong, and for whom there are no happy allowances. The emptiness and shallowness of Prufrock's "universe" and of Prufrock himself are evident from the very beginning of the poem. He cannot find it in himself to tell the woman what he really feels, and when he tries to tell her, it comes out in a mess. At the end of the poem, he realizes that he has no big role in life.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. 369-372. Print.
...all tell you all."(94-95) Unfortunately for Prufrock, he pessimistically assumes that even if his dream came true, he still wouldn't know what to tell them all, or how. Eliot doesn't give any sense of hope for Prufrock in the poem. He remains a doomed character until the very end. Prufrock even admits that he has "seen the moment of my greatness flicker,"(84) He is a victim of time and natural selection.
The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem that was written by T. S Eliot. The poem introduces the character, Prufrock, as a man who is very pessimistic about everything and is incapable of change. Prufrock sees the society he lives in as a place that is full of people who think alike, and he thinks he is different from them. Though Prufrock, realizes that the society he is associated with needs a change and have more people who think differently, but the fact that he is very concerned about what people would think of him if he tries to speak up to make a change or that he would be ignored or be misunderstood for whatever he says hindered him from expressing himself the way he would like to. Prufrock then decides not to express himself in order to avoid any type of rejection. In the poem, Prufrock made use of several imagery and metaphor to illustrate how he feels about himself and the society he is involved in. Prufrock use of imageries and
Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in An Introduction to Literature. Ed Sylvan Barnet et al. 13 ed. New York: Longman. 2004. 937-940.
On the surface, ?The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock? is about an older man who is distressed by his own inability to tell a woman of his desire for her. He tries to relay his feelings to her but comes up with all kinds of excuses not to, and ultimately does not. The speakers? real problem is not that he is just too timid to confess his love for this particular woman, it is that he has a somewhat unproductive, bleak life and has a lack of willpower and boldness to change that life.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is hardly a love song at all. That irony is clear in that the narrator’s voice is anxious, self-conscious, and depressed. It seems he has wasted his life or that life was wasted on him, and he regrets not being born as a creature that lives on the bottom of the sea. The very last lines of the poem,
The title of this poem makes us think that this is going to be a love story with him and a significant other. But these expectations are not fulfilled by the text starting in the introductory epigraph. The title is completely ironic because this is not a “love song”, yet this story is about a depressed, lonely and weak man. The title makes us think that this poem is going to be a serious love song about J. Alfred Prufrock, but instead it is more of a fake love song. From the third line of the poem he shows a man who is unable to communicate, much less sing, “love songs” to anyone.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century (Williams 49). It is certainly not a love song like any that had been written before. The second and third lines shock the reader because of their unusual imagery that would be out of place in a traditional love poem, describing the setting sunlit sky as looking "like a patient etherised upon a table" (Eliot 3). This "etherised" outside world is the key to understanding all of Prufrock's views. He is afraid of the increasingly industrialized and impersonal city surrounding him, and he is unsure of what to do and afraid to commit to any particular choice of action (Mays 112). Paralysis is the main theme of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
Elliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 3rd ed. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1997. 781-785.
In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the author is establishing the trouble the main character, Prufrock, is having coming to terms with middle age. He is deeply distressed over the fact that he is growing old, and feels that the prime of his life has passed him by. His preoccupation with time throughout the poem characterizes his fear of aging. He is a man experiencing a mid-life crisis, brought about by his perception of aging and his own feelings of inadequacy.
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Longman Anthology of World Literature: Volume F: The Twentieth Century. 2nd ed. Djelal Kadir and Ursula K. Heise. Toronto: Pearson Longman, 2009. 221-24.
The title T. S. Eliot chose for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is ironic. Mr. Prufrock does not love anyone, nor does he believe he is loved. He has disdain for the society of which he wishes he were a part, and he believes society views him no differently. The imagery of Mr. Prufrock's thoughts provide the audience a more detailed insight into his character than had Mr. Eliot simply listed Mr. Prufrock's virtues and flaws. Mr. Prufrock is seen as an exaggeration or extreme for the sake of literary commentary, but the world has many Prufrocks in many differing degrees, and T. S. Eliot has made them a little easier to understand.
Prufrock, the narrator of the poem, is a middle-aged man who is living a life void of meaning and purpose. His thoughts are depressing as he mulls over his dull, uneventful life. One of his most crippling traits is cowardice. He's v...