The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock is a long and challenging poem that seems rather disjointed and confusing upon first reading. It seems as though us readers will never understand the deeper meaning of the poem without getting inside Eliot's head and seeing his thought process for ourselves. However, through digging deeper and examining the piece closer we can find that this is meant to be an ironic and tragic tale of a man who feels isolated and incapable of decisive action. It is ironically called a "love song" because Prufrock longs to profess love and affection to a woman, but is too afraid to do it.
Analysis of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" J. Alfred Prufrock constantly lived in fear, in fear of life and death. T. S. Eliot divided his classic poem into three equally important sections. Each division provided the reader with insight into the mental structure of J. Alfred Prufrock. In actuality, Prufrock maintained a good heart and a worthy instinct, but he never seemed to truly exist. A false shadow hung over his existence. Prufrock never allowed himself to actually live. He had no ambitions that would drive him to succeed. The poem is a silent cry for help from Prufrock. In each section, T. S. Eliot provided his audience with vague attempts to understand J. Alfred Prufrock. Each individual reader can only interpret these
Never in Love When reading the title of T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” it is believed we are in store for a poem of romance and hope. A song that will inspire embrace and warmth of the heart, regretfully this is could not be further from the truth. This poem takes us into the depths of J. Alfred Prufrock, someone who holds faltering doubt and as a result may never come to understand real love. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” takes us through Prufrock’s mindset and his self-doubting and self-defeating thoughts. With desolate imagery, a tone that is known through the ages and delicate diction we see a man who is insecure, tentative and completely fearful.
Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.
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
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is about an indecisive man who cannot tell a woman he has feelings for her. Prufrock is struggling with telling the woman of his feelings because, he is afraid of rejection. With time he begins to struggle with loneliness and feeling empty. Due to the indecisions he degrades himself for balding and having thin arms and legs. By doing this Prufrock comes to the decision that all women will never view him as a possible companion. Also, everywhere he goes he makes the places he describes seem lifeless. The city that Prufrock describes gives the reader insight on where he lives and how empty and uninteresting the city is to him. T. S. Eliot uses imagery in this poem to depict the emptiness of modern life.
¨The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock¨, a poem by T.S. Eliot, was written shortly after WW1, a war that left millions dead or scarred for life. The subject of this poem, J. Alfred Prufrock is a victim of this terrible event. After the war, his life has drastically changed. Feelings of insignificance, looking a fool, and growing old are all characterized by Eliot’s repetition for effect, ambiguity, and allusion.
Unlike Oedipus, the character in T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is timid, insecure and indecisive. Throughout the poem, Prufrock is faced with a decision to approach a woman he has developed a liking to, or remain looking out a lonely window drowning his self consciousness in an ocean of self doubt. He wants to ask her the overwhelming question, but instead he purposefully avoids the woman by having personal detour conversations with himself about his self image. The entire poem is laced with Prufrock asking himself questions. He asks “Do I dare disturb the universe?”(Eliot) as if the whole world will come crashing down if he simply talks to her. He wants to wait for the right time, but in the same thought, he knows his years are running out; he mentions his bald spot and thin arms. Prufrock is so consumed with himself and how others might portray or judge him, that it is paralyzing him from social activities and gatherings. He is going through a mid life crisis that he may have brought on himself by leading an unproductive, bland life and his lack of
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” draws attention to the idea that time is of the essence. On the surface, Prufrock is portrayed as a man who is incapable of making decisions and lacks self-confidence. This is evident through his passive nature, where he continuously delays having
Eliot’s earliest work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, set the bar for Modernisms exemplification of Man and his Modern Masculinity. This was done by incorporating Symbolism, and Imagism along with looking past the profound facts, and into the subconscious (Freud).
This poem relates Prufrock's problems as they consume him, introducing a very psychological edge to this poem, allowing the reader to consider the emotional state of Prufrock, as he emotionally and mentally tears himself down. As shown in Eliot’s poem, modernism carries itself throughout the whole story. For one, Eliot used a term called move toward universality. Eliot uses J. Alfred Prufrock as a representative example of an urban man attempting to make sense of the world around him. As such, Eliot’s poem shows a move toward considering modernist poetry as a way for readers to understand the world around them, and not simply a way for reflecting on their own unique
Prufrock exemplifies a man frustrated and dejectedly estranged from his own imagination but still, desperate for visionary redemption. His life is overwhelmed with pointless indications, expected encounters, and torturing unstimulating experiences. Prufrock as a character represents the cultural decadence and moral declination that Eliot associates with the culture of his time. He is an outcome of a world experiencing a deterioration of its past cultural tradition, a non-fulfilling institutional authority, and detrimental focus on singularity. He portrays these past occurrences through the Prufrock character contradicting impersonality.
Participation in life is an important part of enjoying it. Lack of self-confidence can cause a person to stay on the sidelines and miss out on the many joyful moments of life. In the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, the main character is an intelligent middle aged man who realizes too late that he is missing his chance at happiness because he is afraid. The Modernism in the poem is also apparent because of this alienation. The bleak and insecure persona of Prufrock along with the use of imagery helps to create a theme of time and lost opportunity in the poem.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a poem written by T. S. Eliot in 1911. Prufrock is a fictional character with the poets intended audience being fictional as well. In this poem, Eliot uses multiple forms and meters in this monologue, rhyming couplets that have a song like quality while other lines are more like a free verse with no regular meter. Along with blank verse, the poet uses iambic meter which is also used by one of Eliot’s favorite authors, Shakespeare. This poem dramatizes the conflicts of a middle aged man that is wandering the city, alone and overcautious. He is full of questions, insecurities and the inability to follow through with his plans. In the form of a dramatic monologue, this modernistic poem is a journey into the mind of a man who may or may not be in love. J. Alfred Prufrock is a confused lonely soul that has many unanswered questions and lacks the ability to communicate with anyone but himself.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot and Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold the poets utilizes poetic devices to convey their respective themes. Through use of symbols and metaphors, the speaker in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock displays his fears of the changes brought with the younger generation, and isolation from the changing society. The speaker in Dover Beach, utilizes symbols, metaphors, and similes to state that the younger generation has less faith than the older, and society must regain faith to stop the world from fighting. The younger generation needs to bridge the generation gap and remember to value and include the older generation, as they still can help the younger. If they do, they can stop the chaos in the world that stems from the isolation and loss of faith.