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Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock Analysis

Decent Essays

A quote from Dante’s Inferno starts this ballad off, and with one man, Guido da Montefeltro, beginning to recount how he ended up in the 8th circle of hell, the readers are given the impression that the setting for this poem is not as pleasant as previously presumed; along with a chilling connotation of what is to come. Throughout T.S Eliot’s, “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” he expresses the dangers in waiting for the perfect time, constantly fearing rejection, and succumbing to your insecurities. Being scared to live is no way for any person to live at all, and in this love song, that is only that in the title, J. Alfred Prufrock takes us through his case of wanting but never having due to his own decisions of indecision. Time is a very uncertain thing, especially how much a person has in this world. Prufrock’s obsession with time and the idea that there will always be more or another causes the poem to end with his death, not having accomplished a single thing he claimed to have time to do. He takes us through the inner workings of his brain as he contemplates this “overwhelming question” he can’t quite seem to ask. It is as though Prufrock is infatuated with this woman he is speaking to and we, the readers, are to assume the question is if she feels the same way. While he stalled, promising time for the perfect time, it came and went in a fleeting moment, and we watched his contemplations on the question turn to past tense as poor Alfred J. Prufrock’s infinite time

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