Essay: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Essay: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

NOTE: This essay was sent to the University of Oxford as part of the admissions process.

The introspective and antropological nature of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” conveys the theme of the banality of life, as well as the indecisiveness of the character portrayed. To express these thoughts, Eliot uses a range of techniques and existentialist ideas.

Firstly, the poem is related to the ‘stream of consciousness’, reflecting the excessively analytical nature of Prufrock. Most of the text is set in a city, which embodies a certain atmosphere of impersonality. There is also a clear change in the scenery in the last few stanzas, which develop in the beach. This new setting contrasts with the first one, introducing the reader to the image of the mermaids, as Eliot says: “I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me”. These creatures are considered evil and seductive in texts such as the “Odyssey”. The narrator thinks he will not even listen to the mermaids’ voices, meaning that he considers himself somebody who does not even deserve to be seduced. It is a nihilistic attitude in a way and it denotes very low self-esteem. He views himself as someone unattractive in the line: “wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”, where he reflects on the idea that he has over-planned everything so much that nothing really matters anymore. Actually in the 1910s, rolling the trouser bottoms might have been seen as something quite unsexy for an old man to do. 

This poem has an effect upon the reader, provoking a variety of emotions, one of them is unease. From the very first line, we are left with unanswered questions and contrasts, making us feel uncomfortable. In “Let us go then, you and I”, we do not know to whom the speaker is addressing to. Does “you” mean “the reader” or someone off scene? Introducing the image of this mysterious couple makes the whole poem develop smoothly, as Prufrock does not really know how to move his relationship with “you” forward. The fact that we have no information about these questions builds up the feeling of uncertainty in the reader, reaching a climax with the sentence “when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table”. Those lines express a contrast between a romantic afternoon scene, which has a correlation with the couple that has just been mentioned, and a very cold and hostile image, which appears unexpectedly as an anti-climax, leaving the reader confused at first. This image is quite unusual, as one could trace a parallel between this patient’s deteriorated health and how Prufrock feels like in his personal relationship with the character “you”. Additionally, once the poem has finished, although we know a lot about Prufrock’s attitudes to life and his introspective nature, we do not have any information about his social status whatsoever. We do not even know if he is really as old as he thinks he is.

A key feature in Prufrock is his negative mentality, characterised by a feeling of underestimation. He blames himself for his lack of action. In the sentence “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” Prufrock relates himself to this Shakespearean hero, whose main tragic flaw is actually overthinking, whilst assigning himself a minor Shakespearean role. We can, in fact, listen to two different voices in this particular line. The first one is Prufrock’s, rejecting his similarities with Hamlet and questioning his existence, as the words “to be” indicate by alluding to Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech, hence making him question his own existence. The second voice we hear in these lines is Eliot’s who, on the other hand, has placed the word “Hamlet” in his poem, ironically pointing out that these two characters are very similar. The lack of decision that Prufrock is experiencing in his personal life leads us back to his relationship with this enigmatic “you”. The narrator is suffering due to his inability to communicate whatever he wants to say to this person.

There is another reference to Shakespeare’s plays in “I know the voices dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a farther room”. This line echoes some of Orsino’s first words in his monologue in Act 1, scene 1 of “Twelfth Night”, which are “music” and “dying fall”. Here Eliot is placing them quite close together, making an allusion to this Shakespearean play, which is generally conceived as a dark comedy. The concept of a “dark comedy” is, in fact, quite relevant in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, since the author contrasts tragic and absurd elements, such as “Do I dare to eat a peach?”, which is a rather extreme and ironic thought to imply indecision. As for the tragic components of the poem, the line “but how his arms and legs are thin” can be seen as an allegory of life and death; Prufrock’s life shortens and thinnings as quickly as his legs do. He, certainly has not enjoyed life, as is evidenced by the quote “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”, in which the narrator explains that he has lived an insignificant, rationed and nearly joyless life. However, that same sentence could have a second meaning, stating that his life has been full of strong emotions, that have been condensed in very small, but yet powerful, quantities, represented by the coffee spoons.

Another technique the poem uses is referencing life and death, pointing towards a consciousness of decay. In his allusion to Lazarus, “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” If one, settling a pillow by her head should say: “That is not what I meant at all, that is not it at all”, not only does Prufrock seem afraid of making a decision too early and thus breaking possible social norms, but he also means that death is inevitable and we will all experience it. Lazarus’ message in this poem is a symbol of the mystery of life beyond death, which is a fairly philosophical question. Death is present in other parts of the text, as can be seen in the words “the eternal Footman”, which point to Greek mythology, in particular to Caronte, who was the one to carry the souls to the other side of Hades. These phrases also illustrate the monotony of Prufrock’s thoughts with the use of repetition and parallelism.

The final stanza gives us another vision of death. Eliot writes: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us and we drown”. There are reminiscences of a similar beach scene in the title and the setting of the fourth part of Eliot’s “The Waste Land”; “Death by water”. In fact, just like “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in its opening quote written in Italian, “The Waste Land” contains direct references to Dante’s “Inferno”, which point towards a continuity in Eliot’s poetic works. My personal impression on reading “till human voices wake us and we drown” is that Prufrock is telling us that he believes he does not belong to this world, he does not classify neither himself nor the character of “you” as ‘human’; he feels alien. He lives in another reality, in which he feels extremely lonely. Prufrock sees the world divided into two realities: the one he lives in and the one where everybody else lives. To me, this suggests that he identifies himself as an outsider. The climax reached with that quote leaves me with the same emotion of unease as that achieved by Camus at the ending of “L’étranger”, as they both refer to there being no escape from death.

The poem has the ability to make the reader feel insignificant. To do that, Eliot uses images and oxymorons such as “there will be time to murder and create”. The contrast between “murder” and “create” expresses that time is beyond the human condition and that it is nearly like a god, who can do whatever it fancies. What is more, the line “in a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse” also conveys ideas of the immensity of time, which make us wonder if life and decisions are meaningful for Prufrock. The narrator’s personality is also defined by the phrase “I must have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas”, in which he compares himself with a crab. This comparison, which contains an internal rhyme, makes us think of the banality of Prufrock’s existence, foreshadowing the final death scene of the poem with the words “silent seas”. An alliteration of the phoneme /s/ can be seen here, creating a cold and hostile atmosphere whilst imitating the sound of the waves. The phrase also portrays one of the main themes in Modernist literature and in Eliot’s poetry itself: intertextuality. Modernists could be compared to “scavengers” of art, who see literature from a broad perspective, as it is evidenced by references to texts by Dante and Shakespeare in this poem. Actually, the image of the carb itself could be a reference to Polonius’ words in “Hamlet”, when he says: “Yourself, sir, should be as old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward”. This ties in with the fact that Prufrock is an old character. The word “backward”, in this context, indicates the possibility of Prufrock changing his mind after making a particular decision, therefore repenting and moving backwards in his sentimental life.

Prufrock’s brain seems to be filled with ideas that he cannot fully control and that keep coming back to him (stream of consciousness). These repetitions express regret and make him question even the most basic of instincts. When Eliot writes “That is not what I meant at all”, we see Prufrock trying to explain a particular misunderstanding that is never fully specified in the text. In addition, “In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo” indicates Prufrock’s visceral sexual frustration. Every woman he ever talks to appears to be interested in speaking about the high arts, rather than any other issue, matters that do not seem to have anything to do with Prufrock’s ambitions or desires. This reinforces the hypothesis that Prufrock is an outsider.

Prufrock’s monologue also speaks about the philosophical view of idealism by suggesting that there might not be a reality as such and exploring the possibility that everything in life may be fake. This is evidenced by the sentence “But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen”, which indicates that sometimes we are unaware of what is going on in the background. We might be living in a false reality, symbolised by the “lantern”, without realising it. The word “patterns” alludes to a sense of determination and banality in human existence and, along with the “magic lantern”, points to the impersonal society and technological innovations of that time. It also indicates how fickle and cold society is with the word “screen”, symbolising falseness. The phrase “to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” strengthens the hypothesis that people are pretending all the time. They seem to be wearing a mask to hide their true feelings to others. The stylistic technique of repetition appears in this sentence with the words “face” and “meet”, this makes society look absurd and monotonous.

To conclude, TS. Eliot’s ability to convey moving, emotive and existentialist feelings captures my interest in this piece of literature, as it creates something remarkably deep and melancholic out of a simple fact, such as a man’s thoughts when walking along the streets of a city.

Words: 1964