T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an ironic depiction of a man’s inability to take decisive action in a modern society that is void of meaningful human connection. The poem reinforces its central idea through the techniques of fragmentation, and through the use of Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world. Using a series of natural images, Eliot uses fragmentation to show Prufrock’s inability to act, as well as his fear of society. Eliot’s commentary about Prufrock’s social world is also evident throughout. At no point in the poem did Prufrock confess his love, even though it is called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, but through this poem, T.S. Eliot voices his social commentary about the world that Prufrock lives in.
Prufrock’s social world is initially revealed as he takes the reader on a journey. Through the lines 1-36, the reader travels with Prufrock through the modern city and its streets as we experience Prufrock’s life and explore his surroundings through his eyes. From the very beginning, the city is portrayed as bleak and empty with no signs of happiness. The setting as Prufrock walks through the street appears to be polluted, dirty, and run-down, as if it is the cheap side of town, giving the feeling of it being lifeless, still, eerie, sleepy and unconscious. Eliot uses imagery, from the skyline to half-deserted streets, to cheap hotels to sawdust restaurants to demonstrate the loneliness and alienation the city possesses. The city Prufrock resides in is, in a way, a shadow of how he is as a person, and the images of the city speak to some part of his personality. Just as the skyline is described as “a patient etherised upon a table” (3), it foreshadows and hints that Prufrock has an...
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...t any reminder of the social world would drown him.
Reinforcing the central idea of the poem through fragmentation techniques, and through commentary from Eliot about the social world of Prufrock, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot is of a man in a human connection voided modern society’s inability to take decisive action. Through Eliot’s fragmentation, the social world of Prufrock is seen as disordered, empty, repetitive, chaotic, judgmental, isolated and a couple others, but nonetheless, he painted a good portrait of the society and has a good sense of the society in which Prufrock inhabits.
Works cited
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 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 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
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. ed. M. H. Abrams New York, London: Norton, 1993.
First, Eliot weaves several layers of symbolism into Prufrocks’s narrative. This ambiguity shows largely through the vehicle of the yellow fog, which Eliot personifies with cat-like characteristics using phrases such as, “…rubs its back…rubs its muzzle on the window-panes” and “…curled once about the house, and fell asleep” in reference to the mist (Eliot). This feline depiction of the city smog creates an eerie setting which serves to further the tone of unsteadiness in Prufrock’s ramblings. The seeping movements of the fog also mirror the uncontrolled movements of Prufrock’s thoughts and his polluted self-concept which causes him to question his every move to no end (Childs). The smog is uncontainable and indefinable, much like Prufrock’s emotions when dependent upon his non-existent actions (Childs). In another instance, Eliot breaks up the deep, incessant wanderings of the speaker’s mind with the phrase, “In the room the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo” (Eliot). These women symbolize the society in which Pr...
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" in An Introduction to Literature. Ed Sylvan Barnet et al. 13 ed. New York: Longman. 2004. 937-940.
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.
T.S. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. His poem“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is different and unusual. He rejects the logic connection, thus, his poems lack logic interpretation. He himself justifies himself by saying: he wrote it to want it to be difficult. The dissociation of sensibility, on the contrary, arouses the emotion of readers immediately. This poem contains Prufrock’ s love affairs. But it is more than that. It is actually only the narration of Prufrock, a middle-aged man, and a romantic aesthete , who is bored with his meaningless life and driven to despair because he wished but
T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has a plethora of possible interpretations. Many people argue that the poem represents a man who appears to be very introverted person who is contemplating a major decision in his life. This decision is whether or not he will consummate a relationship with someone he appears to have an attraction to or feelings for. People also debate whether or not Prufrock from the poem is typical of people today. While there are a plethora of reasons Prufrock is not typical of people today the main three reasons are he is very reserved, he overthinks most situations and he tries avoid his problems instead of solve them.
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
J. Alfred Prufrock was a balding, middle-aged man who was insecure of his ability to converse with women. However, he implicitly danced with dishonesty and lived in an attitude of ignorance caused ironically through his lack of confidence in himself. Likewise, T.S. Eliot seems to have a monologue with himself as well as Prufrock that includes similar feelings of Prufrock’s character. For example, in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Eliot reveals his personal insecurities in regard to writing modern public poetry in lines such as, “There will be time, there will be time/ to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” (27-28) and, “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?” (45-46). These lines enhance the reader’s understanding that Eliot ponders whether he should allow his poetry to go public; telling himself that he has time and more time to enter his writing into the universe of new literature to be judged by critics as Prufrock felt he would have been criticized by women who admired men in great positions. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was most apparently written about Prufrock’s insecurity of women, but lines which contain dual meanings can be applied to both the main character and the author to indicate that Eliot is actually referring to his own anxieties of being an unsuccessful, modernistic poet whose voice could go unheard.
T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" reveals the unvoiced inner thoughts of a disillusioned, lonely, insecure, and self-loathing middle-aged man. The thoughts are presented in a free association, or stream of consciousness style, creating images from which the reader can gain insight into Mr. Prufrock's character. Mr. Prufrock is disillusioned and disassociated with society, yet he is filled with longing for love, comfort, and companionship. He is self-conscious and fearful of his image as viewed through the world's eye, a perspective from which he develops his own feelings of insignificance and disgust. T. S. Eliot uses very specific imagery to build a portrait of Mr. Prufrock, believing that mental images provide insight where words fail.
Around the 1900’s, an author by the name of T.S Eliot wrote a poem, called, “The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock”. This work showed the transition from romanticism to modernism. It established an eerie and mysterious environment, creating a strange and mysterious mood in their urban neighborhood. He learns about his own self-pity through self-reflection. He writes this in order to show that Prufrock is an example of the modern, mentally broken man.
Elliot, T. S. "T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. Web. 29 Mar. 2011. .