Prufrock seeks to ask an important question or state a revelation, but is unable to do so due to these insecurities. IndecisionĪlmost the entirety of the poem sees Prufrock’s narration littered with self-doubt and self-directed questioning: “Do I dare/Disturb the universe?” (46-47) “So how should I presume?” (54) “And how should I begin?” (69). The major themes of "Prufrock" concern indecision, frustration, and decay. The fantasy remains just that - a daydream from which he will have to return to the rote monotony of his life. Even in a make-believe world, Prufrock cannot change his insecure ways, and still does not garner any attention. The mermaids are simply a fantasy to escape from the tedium of his daily life. The poem ends on the solemn note that “we” (129) - humans - have been waiting to join these perfect beings. Prufrock sees himself as so undesirable that even the mermaids wouldn’t sing a tune for him. Prufrock’s monologue ends with his disappointing vision of mermaids, beautiful and unattainable. He states outright: “I grow old…I grow old…” (120). He laments his lot in life as a mere side character: “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be ” (111). Prufrock grows increasingly frantic as he agonizes over his thoughts and whether or not to say what he is thinking, to bring up the issue that plagues him. ![]() The time when he could have been great has passed him by, and instead, he has aged and looked upon the face of death, which scares him. However, Prufrock laments that, in his old age, he no longer has anything of importance to say: “I am no prophet-and here’s no great matter” (83). This refrain is Prufrock signifying that the people around him speak shallowly of grand ideas every day he must listen to the insipid thoughts of people who believe they are saying things of import, yet he is incapable of doing anything about it.Īs the day wears on and it gets later, Prufrock struggles with this great revelation that he wants to say but is scared to. He describes the world around him, full of “yellow fog” (15), and “yellow smoke” (24), representing his own insecurities.Īdditionally, each of the longer opening stanzas are separated by two lines reading, “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo” (13-14, 35-36). It is also apparent at the beginning of the poem that Prufrock suffers from an inability to voice his thoughts, and that all he desires to say remains unspoken. Rather than a musing on the beauty of the sunset, Prufrock, as written by Eliot, likens the evening sky to a person on an operating table under anesthetic. He opens with one of the most famous lines from the poem, “Let us go then, you and I,/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table” (1-3). Prufrock begins by addressing his potential lover. Stream of consciousness is a narrative device in which the author writes in a way that reflects the thought process and inner monologue of the narrator. The poem is the inner monologue of its narrator, Prufrock, as his thoughts veer in a stream of consciousness from thought to thought about his potential lover. With "Prufrock," Eliot broke into the literary scene and set himself apart from poets of his time, who wrote in Georgian or Romantic styles. The 131-line poem features the inner monologue of its narrator as he details his regrets and frustrations in his aged state.įig. The poem is the first that Eliot professionally published in his career. Alfred Prufrock", commonly referred to as just "Prufrock", had been originally written between 19. Alfred Prufrock" (1917)įirst published in 1915, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" marked an important change in poetic history and showcases the tenets of Modernist poetry. Eliot (1888-1965) forces the reader to contemplate the idea of measuring one’s life in coffee spoons. ![]() Alfred Prufrock" (1917), masterful American poet T.S. How do people measure time? In seconds, minutes, hours, days, years? In "The Love Song of J.
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