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Theme Of The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock

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The dramatic monologue, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is a short poem written by the Nobel Prize winner, and scholar T.S. Eliot. He wrote this poem and published it in the Poetry Magazine in 1915, while he was still in college at Washington University in St. Louis. Eliot is one of the most important English- language writers of the 20th century, and he lived in St Louis at an early age being raised by his mother. His mother was both loving and manipulative, and from that a lonely and strict adolescence, came a man with an immense desire to be independent (Gladstein). Eliot’s poem is about a man by the name J. Alfred Prufrock, who is a very awkward man, telling us the story of him trying to open himself up to his lover. Prufrock is …show more content…

Bradley. Bradley examination was on Private Consciousness and this became a theme of Eliot’s later works (Puchner 2119). The most relevant characteristic that both Eliot and Prufrock share is private consciousness. Private consciousness means to have a heightened sense of awareness as a person, and to care about what others think of the actions that you take. Prufrock speaks tells the readers about this matter a few times. Prufrock is very self-conscious about himself and seems to care mostly about how he looks and what others think when they look at him: “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair (The will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”); (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”); Do I dare—Disturb the Universe? (Eliot 2124). The narrator, Prufrock, is really worried about what the people around him think. More importantly, he is also very curious and nervous about how his lover will respond to the feelings that he has for either him or her. Near the end of the work, Prufrock goes on to tell readers about how he is getting older which also compliments the idea of private consciousness “I grow old … I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” (Elliot 2126). Eliot heavily portrayed this theme to be distinctly private consciousness, because of the importance and emphasis on how Prufrock really is nervous and worried about what others think of him and that really affects the story theme as a whole. During

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