The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock Analysis Essay

Love That Never Sung T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a complex poem with a dramatic monologue in which the speaker is addressing himself, the reader, or possibly a silent character. T.S Elliot uses poetic devices, such as tone, imagery, repetition, personification, similes, and allusions to shape the poem’s theme of loneliness and mediocrity. Tone and imagery set the essence of this poem. The poem begins with a not so pleasant image of a patient that is anesthetized with ether (Line 3). This sets the tone of the poem to be dark and ambiguous. The reader can assume that the direction the speaker is going will not be pleasant. The speaker is taking a walk through the city streets to visit someone and the “streets that follow are like a tedious argument” (Line 8). The speaker’s

Elliot also uses similes to shape the poet’s theme. The speaker is obviously troubled and uncomfortable in the situation he is in. He is anxious and worrisome about this lingering question that hangs over him on whether he should tell a woman how he feels. The poem begins with a comparison of the evening to a patient under anesthesia. In lines 2 and 3, the author quotes, “When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.” This comparison gives the reader a dark and blemish perspective on where this poem is alluding to. Throughout the poem, the speaker is struggling to speak his mind and says, “It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worthwhile” (Line 104-106). He compares his feelings to a magic lantern being used to display pictures. It makes the reader question why he would compare his emotion to this picture moving innovation. The speaker is saying that if he were to show his emotions, he would be displaying them as fast as a magic lantern displays its pictures. The use of similes allow his thought process to be captured within the