“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem by T. S. Eliot, in which Eliot describes a man that was placed in the wrong time period. To do this he references some of Prufrock’s characteristics from other authors, such as Shakespeare. Shymal Bagchee expresses his view on Eliot’s modernist and absurdist viewpoints for the poem in his critical review titled “‘Prufrock’: An Absurdist View of the Poem.”
Prufrock does not express his emotions like a regular person would, one that is connected to their feelings about the opposite sex. He does not fit into the characteristics of the fictional men of his time. Prufrock is considered to be a non- hero. Many other reviews of this poem, “ridicule the poem's main character for his timidity and self-deception” (Bagchee 1). At first glance Prufrock seems to be quiet and allows the word to pass by him, but “he is acutely conscious of the insensitivity and callousness of his society” (1). Prufrock may not be able to convey his feelings to women, but he knows who he is; “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; / Am an attendant lord…” (Lines 117- 118). Here Prufrock compares himself to Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet. Hamlet was a tragic hero, but Prufrock would not go and die to save a world that is as inconsiderate as his. Yet, they have the similarity of being indecisive, and contemplative about what should do in their particular situations.
One might think that, “Prufrock's most urgent wish is to convey his feelings” (Bagchee 1). They might think that because the love song of Prufrock is a song that is never sung or even expressed in the poem. Prufrock’s unheard love song is more of a plea that is crying out as if to say that he wants to connect with women, but there is some kind barr...
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...rces of life, he takes the time to question and assess the damages. He is aware of what is around him while his peers in the poem are clueless about the world around them. Prufrock’s world is made from the agony and despair that is seen in the real world.
Work Cited
Bagchee, Shyamal. "'Prufrock': An Absurdist View of the Poem." English Studies in Canada 6.4 (Winter 1980): 430-443. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 113. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” READING LITERATURE AND WRITING ARUGUMENT. Ed. Missy James and Alan P. Merickel. 4th ed. United States: Longman/ Pearson, 2011. 176- 180. Print.
Oxford Dictionary. Definitions for Prude and Frock. Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, 2014. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
"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.
The speakers and audience in poem are crucial elements of the poem and is also the case in these poems. In the poem Untitled, it can be argued that the poem is being written by Peter based on what his father might say to him...
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
By a correct reading of "Prufrock," I mean a reading consistent with the central theme of the poet's belief made mute because the poet lives in a culture of unbelief--that is, the "silence" of the poetic vision in modernity. Prufrock renounces his inherited, romantic role as "poet as prophet" and renounces poetry's role as a successor to religion. The future of poetry may have once been immense, but that future no longer exists for Prufrock, who is faced not only with the certainty of the rejection of his poetic vision but also with a situation in which there are no grounds for rhetoric: "That is not what I meant at all. / That is not it, at all." Fear of rejection leads Prufrock to the ultimate silencing of the prophet and hero within himself, to being "a pair of ragged claws." He cannot share his poetic vision of life: to do so would threaten the very existence of that life. Paradoxically, not to share his light, his "words among mankind," threatens the loss ...
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996. 2459-2463.
Eliot, T.S.. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996.
There are a few instances in the poem that refer to Prufrock as an introverted person distinguishing him from typical people today. For instance, in the poem Prufrock says “I
In conclusion, after exploring the theme of this poem and reading it for myself, Eliot has created this persona, in industrialised England or somewhere else. A man of low self-esteem, you embark his journey as he struggles with a rational fear of being rejected by a woman. Which gives the reader sympathy to Prufrock, as he lives within his own personal
"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."
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.
In the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S Eliot uses a man named Prufrock to describe the uncertainties in life and how they affect a person views. Prufrock does not have the confidence to give or receive love. There is an equally amount of unhappiness to the concept of time and space. He is unsatisfied with life and with the decisions to think rather than act. He claims that there will be much time to do things in the social world. Prufrock is more of an anti-hero that is controlled by fear. T.S Eliot uses tone, allusions, and imagery to explain a man’s inability to make decisions and his own self confidence in life in which he is afraid of the outlook of his future by being misunderstood.
Munro, Alice. “Prue”. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford, 2002. 467-469. Print.
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...