It is hard to imagine a man bearing the name “J. Alfred Prufrock” serenading the lady of his dreams with a “love song.” The name is overtly civilized – fastidious, hardly romantic. The discordant title of T. S. Eliot’s poem hints, then, at the impossibility of such a man connecting romantically with another. Precisely why this impossibility arises is the question tackled in the poem. The persona of Prufrock, a man who is middle-aged and – being well-dressed and well-educated – of the upper-middle class, allows Eliot to explore the character of the average man and, through his experiences, the world around him. Ultimately, the poem provides a very bleak portrayal of modern life: it is a hell on earth in which average men such as Prufrock are damned to isolation by way of unwillingness and inability to take meaningful action.
The characterization of the modern world as a hell begins with the epigraph preceding the poem, a few lines taken from Dante’s Inferno, translated thus:
If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned
alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy. (Eliot Fn.1)
The passage is spoken by Guido de Mentelfeltro, a character punished through flame in the Inferno who “confesses his shame” to Dante (Fn.1); its usage within Eliot’s poem suggests that Prufrock, who subsequently assumes the first-person voice, is speaking from “the depths” (Eliot Fn.1) of hell. Furthermore, like Dante who is taken to the lowest level of hell, the readers are taken in a downward motion: the poem begins with an image of “the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table” (2-3), travels “through narrow streets” (70), and concludes in the “chambers of the sea” (129). By openly quoting from the Inferno, as well as imitating its movement, Eliot provides a very clear indicator that his poem will be an exploration of hell. Unlike the Divine Comedy, however, Prufrock’s hell is defined by “sprinkled streets/...novels...teacups...[and] skirts that trail along the floor” (101-102) – it is a contemporary world.
One of the major elements of this contemporary world`s hellishness, as the poem suggests, is its apparent meaninglessness, effectively captured in the lines “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo” (13-14). Despite the sophistication of these women discussing fine art and history, the fact that they “come and go” (13) implies a lack of direction or true purpose in their lives. The simple rhyme scheme, in contrast to the more complicated, sporadic rhyming elsewhere in the poem, is dull. Furthermore, the repetition of those lines later in the poem (35-36) suggests the repetitiveness of life with all its dullness and lack of purpose. The women thus evoke an eerie image: apparitions or lost souls moving aimlessly, thoughtlessly repeating the same interactions.
Prufrock’s life, “measured out...with coffee spoons” (51), is characterized by the same sort of trivial interaction. However, the poem seems to indicate that its speaker (and thus, the average man) has the capacity to escape the monotony of day to day life. Prufrock is constantly considering some “overwhelming question” (10), which evidently bares great significance in his life. Furthermore, the first stanza of the poem, “Let us go then, you and I,/...through certain half-deserted streets,/...To lead you to an overwhelming question” (1-10), indicates that Prufrock wants to act on that “overwhelming question” (10). Despite this, he is unable “to force the moment to its crisis” (80) and thereby dooms himself to a life characterized by the same pointlessness of the women who “come and go” (13). Thus the futility of the modern world is due to average men like Prufrock who have the capacity to act meaningfully, yet do not. To understand the hellishness of the modern world, then, one must understand the basic unit which creates and perpetuates that hellishness.
The average modern man, Prufrock, is, primarily, educated. Throughout the poem, Prufrock references a variety of sources: he alludes to English literature, as in the line “And indeed there will be time” (23), which echoes Andrew Marvell’s metaphysical poem “To His Coy Mistress” (Eliot Fn. 2); he demonstrates his knowledge of Classics when he refers to Works and Days by Hesiod (Eliot Fn. 3); he also draws from Biblical sources, such as when he compares himself to John the Baptist (Eliot Fn. 5). The wide range of references, as well their extensive usage throughout the poem, demonstrates Prufrock’s broad education and, more importantly, the pervasiveness of that education in his own stream of thought. In contemplating his own life, Prufrock cannot help but to compare himself to the figures he has studied, and thus he feels, understandably, inadequate. For instance, in considering himself in the context of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prufrock must conclude himself to be “an attendant lord.../Almost, at times, the Fool” (112-119), but certainly not the title character, Prince Hamlet. In light of his extensive and pervasive knowledge of literary, historical, and Biblical figures, Prufrock perceives himself to be of “no great matter” (83).
It is not only his external education but also his internal knowledge – his knowledge of himself, independent of his formal education – which causes Prufrock to feel incompetent. In particular, Prufrock is concerned with the fact that he is aging; throughout the poem, he mentions the “bald spot in the middle of [his] hair” (40). His acute self-awareness and self-preoccupation leads into paranoia; Prufrock imagines that others must see what he is so keenly aware of, and thus is uncomfortable in social situations where he feels as though he is “pinned and wriggling on the wall” (58), an insect under inspection, mocked by “the eyes that fix [him]” (56). “I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,/And in short, I was afraid” (85-86), he says, effectively expressing the relation between his aging towards death, “the eternal Footman” (85), humiliation, and the consequent fear of acting meaningfully. Thus it is not only the formal education he has received, but also his knowledge of self, that keeps Prufrock from taking control of his life.
It appears then that Eliot criticizes education and knowledge; more accurately, the poem criticizes the compulsive reflection on these things that characterizes the modern man as represented in the character Prufrock. The poem can be viewed as an internal debate, Prufrock fruitlessly grappling with questions such as “’Do I dare?’” (38), “’How should I presume?’” (54), and “’Would it have been worthwhile?’” (100), all the while obsessively assessing himself as though he were the “patient etherized upon a table” (3) in the opening stanza. Thus, the entire poem itself is “a tedious argument” (8), a weighing of the pros and – more so – the cons. Like “the yellow fog” (15) which “rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,/[Licks] its tongue into the corners of the evening,/[And lingers] upon the pools that stand in drains” (16-18), touching on every aspect of the city, Prufrock makes “decisions and revisions” (48) in thoroughly assessing his own life (48) but ultimately falls asleep and fails to act, “till human voices wake [him], and [he drowns]” (131). It is Prufrock’s endless analysis of his life that leads to his indecision and inability to act – he is, effectively, paralyzed by thought.
Thus, Prufrock, unable to escape a life of triviality, remains an isolated human being; one can see this in the way he describes other people. Prufrock calls acquaintances merely “the faces that you meet” (27); women are defined as “the eyes” (56) and “arms that are braceleted and white and bare” (63); he does not converse with anyone, but hears “voices dying with a dying fall/...from a farther room” (52-53). These lines indicate that Prufrock is notably detached from other people; he never encounters or engages with them as whole beings.
The motif of disconnection runs through the entire poem, in fact, suggesting that it is a prevalent characteristic of the modern world. For instance, the poem leaps from one image to another: Eliot links the evening sky to an image of an anaesthetized patient; then he shifts suddenly to describing a seedy neighbourhood; from a metaphor ascribing feline attributes to the city fog, he transitions into domestic imagery involving “teas and cakes and ices” (79); he ends, finally, with a fantastical image of the ocean and mermaids “wreathed with seaweed red and brown” (130). Through such disconnected imagery, the author challenges the reader’s sense of coherence while reading the poem, providing him or her insight into the pervasive modern sense of confusion and disconnection.
This relates, finally, back to the conception of the modern world as a hell of lost souls whose interactions, like those of the women who discuss Michelangelo, are meaningless. Such modern interactions are meaningless precisely because there is no significant connection made between men and women. As the poem suggests, lack of connection with the world and with other people is an element of the modern experience because average men and women such as Prufrock, the constituents of society, are predominantly preoccupied with thought; they obsessively dissect their lives and neglect to act meaningfully, afraid of their own perceived shortcomings. Thus arises the impossibility of the title: there can be no romance for a man like J. Alfred Prufrock; he damns himself to perpetual isolation, as to a hell. Prufrock offers the readers insight into that self-imposed personal hell of scrutiny and pity, the essence of modern life, like “Lazarus, come from the dead,...to tell [us] all” (94-95).
Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Nina Baym et al. 7th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008. 863-866. Print.
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