Poet's Corner
Explanation: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Lines 1-6
This epigraph is taken from Dante's Divine Comedy. It reads: "If
I thought my answer were to one who could ever return to the world, this
flame would move no more; but since no one has ever returned alive from
this depth, if what I hear be true, without fear of infamy I answer you."
The words are spoken by a lost soul, damned to Hell for the attempt to buy
absolution in advance of committing a crime. This correlates with
Prufrock's need to know the answer to the question he wants to ask as a
condition of asking it. Or perhaps in order for Prufrock to be able to ask
the question he would have to not care what the answer would be; in that
case, the answer wouldn't matter.
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Lines 7-9
Prufrock, the persona of the poem, issues his invitation to an
unspecified "you" to go with him to an as yet unspecified place. To
establish when they will be going, he introduces the disconcerting simile
"like a patient etherised upon a table." This peculiar use of simile
reflects immediately back on the persona, for the sky itself would
probably never be like this; however, Prufrock, looking up at the sky,
might indeed perceive it pressing back down upon him in such a way that he
would feel like he was "spread out" "upon a table." The word "etherised"
indicates a sense of helplessness.
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Lines 10-13
The route he and the "you" will be taking is through a tawdry part of
the city where "cheap hotels" predominate, along with lower-class dining
establishments. "Muttering retreats" suggests places where people who go
to be alone speak in low voices so their private conversations will not be
heard. The phrase "one-night" refers to hotels where lovers meet in
secret, and the reference to "oyster-shells" carries with it the
connotation of sexuality, as these are a food said to improve sexual
stamina.
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Lines 14-18
"Streets" are further described by a simile that indicates that even
once you pass through them, the things you have seen there continue to
affect you, specifically the idea of people engaged in the romantic or
sexual encounters in the hotels and restaurants. This then affects
Prufrock's thoughts about where he is going, causing him to consider what
he characterizes as an "overwhelming" question. The use of the ellipsis
indicates that the "you" who accompanies Prufrock has asked what that
question would be.The rhymed couplets of "I-sky," "streets-retreats,"
"hotels-oyster-shells," "argument-intent," and "'What is it?'-visit,"
along with repetition of the word "streets," create an emotional music in
keeping with the idea of a song, and thus serve to carry the reader into
Prufrock's emotional state.
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Lines 19-20
The reference to the visit presented in the preceding stanza causes
Prufrock to look forward in his mind's eye to the room he is walking
toward, where he imagines women preparing the tea and talking of some
intellectual or artistic subject quite at odds with the thoughts he has
been having.
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Lines 21-28
The near repetition in lines 21 and 22 signals that Prufrock's
attention has returned from the imagined room to his actual surroundings.
It is evening, foggy, and his attention focuses on the fog mixed with
chimney smoke, and then takes off in a metaphorical process that equates
the movement of the fog with the movement of some seemingly cat-like
creature around the structure of the city at evening. Prufrock's lyrical
musing here reflects the dream-like emotional state evoked by the fog.The
lines in this stanza are very close in length, so that along with the
rhyme pattern of a a b a c d e d a, and the alliteration of
"[l]icked," "[l]ingered," and "leap," a kind of trancelike state is
established.
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Lines 29-40
Prufrock's reverie on the smoke or fog reminds him that dreamed or
imagined activity has no correlation to actions or events in real time, so
he determines that just as there is time for the fog and smoke, there is
time to get himself adjusted to what he is about to do. However, at the
fourth repetition of "There will be time" he is once more focusing on
where he is going and what he is about to do there, and he is overwhelmed
once again. Eliot exaggerates Prufrock's emotional state by paralleling it
to those associated with acts of murder and creation. At this point the
phrase "there will be time" transmutes into repetitions of the word "time"
like a clock ticking the seconds of the present into Prufrock's past. The
reference to "works and days" is to an eighth century B.C. poem by Hesiod about a Greek farmer who urges his
brother to work as hard as he himself does. Prufrock imagines other hands
working harder than his, that will ultimately somehow necessitate his
asking the "overwhelming question." However, he maintains he has time yet
for a hundred dream-visions of cat-like fogs, for a hundred corrections to
his thought process, before he arrives for tea.
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Lines 41-42
The reference above to having tea presents him with the repeated image
in the rhymed couplet.
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Lines 43-50
Here Prufrock's thought process becomes infused with a sense of the
ridiculous, as he pictures himself losing his resolve, turning and walking
back down the stairs before even knocking on the door. The irony is that,
seeing himself as silly, he begins to be aware of how others might see
him, even to the point of including in the stream of his own thought
(bracketed in the poem) disparaging comments that he imagines these others
might make about him, comments that are in direct contradiction of how he
sees himself.
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Lines 51-54
Prufrock's third repetition of "Do I dare?" is exaggerated to reflect
the depth of his own dread. He repeats that while there is time for all
these thoughts, the situation is still hopeless: as long as it takes to
make a decision is as long as it takes to reverse that decision.
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Lines 55-60
Prufrock tries to explain why he is indecisive about his feelings
toward the woman he is meeting for tea. It is because he knows the kind of
social life he is moving toward. He knows how people who live together and
have social obligations toward one another act — or are supposed to act.
The visual image of the coffee spoons indicates that he himself has had
innumerable cups of coffee in unbearable social situations. The aural
image of the "voices dying" refers to difficult and embarrassing social
conversations that falter while those involved pretend to be listening to
music. And so, Prufrock asks himself, how can such a socially inept
individual as he is ever hope to assume a part in real human life with
this woman?
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Lines 61-67
Prufrock indicates that he is familiar with people who appraise him
according to some set of standards that have nothing to do with who he
considers himself to be. Eliot uses metaphor here to illustrate that such
appraisals make Prufrock incapable of human response because he feels as
if he is as insignificant and helpless as a bug stuck by a pin for
collection and examination. The image of the "butt-ends" are what he
thinks his "days and ways" must be reduced to in order to explain what he
does, as the "butt-ends" of cigarettes are what remains after the pleasure
of smoking.
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Lines 68-75
The tone softens here as Prufrock recalls a third thing that he has
"known" as a result of social situations, symbolized by the image of
feminine arms. These arms have a hint of the sensual in the bracketed
information he provides that is suggestive of the earlier animal image of
the fog as well as of the sexual associations of the hotels and
restaurants. Prufrock realizes that this image of what he has "known" is
at variance with those of the two preceding stanzas, and wonders what has
shifted his thoughts. That it was the feminine appeal of a perfume he
caught scent of continues the visual image of these arms, however,
transforming the question asked at the end of each of those preceding
stanzas. Now he asks, "Should I presume?" This implies that his desire for
the female embrace is overriding his doubts. Indeed, the final line
assumes he will "presume" by allowing him to consider "how" to begin.
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Line 76
This ellipsis acts to divide the first two sections of the poem; it
also indicates that there were thoughts resulting from the final question
of the preceding stanza that neither Prufrock nor Eliot wants to consider
further.
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Lines 77-79
Eliot brings Prufrock and the reader back to the idea of how Prufrock
might begin to talk to the woman he is going to meet. The image of "lonely
men" symbolizes the loneliness of Prufrock. The use of an ellipsis within
the sentence structure at the close of the stanza indicates further
consideration, perhaps, of this loneliness, which is enhanced by the fact
that these are the only two consecutive unrhymed lines in the poem.
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Lines 80-81
Prufrock acknowledges what he feels to be the utter hopelessness of his
situation. The image of the "ragged claws" in the "silent seas" suggests
that, as a creature of a "higher order" Prufrock's brain is doing him no
good at all. In fact, it is clear that Prufrock feels that his ability to
speak — which supposedly establishes his superiority over all other
animals — is so inferior that he should be relegated to a world of
silence.
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Line 82
The ellipsis here might mark further hopeless thoughts which have not
been included, but more likely indicates the enormity of the realization
Prufrock has just come to: his human life will be wasted as a result of
his inability to participate fully in human relationships.
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Lines 83-94
There is a definite shift in tone here, in keeping with the image of
evening made peaceful by "long fingers" caressing it into sleep. The
internal ellipses indicate reconsiderations, so that perhaps the evening
and (by metaphorical process) Prufrock's emotions are not so much
"peacefully" at rest, perhaps they are "tired," or worse, shirking their
duty. In any case, it is the evening now which is cat-like "beside you and
me." And here it seems as if "you" might be hopefully referring to the
woman with which Prufrock has presumably had tea. But this peacefulness is
disrupted as Prufrock wonders if he "has the strength" to ask this woman
the "overwhelming question." Despite the fact that Prufrock has agonized
over the situation, he does not know whether he will be able to ask his
question or not. His association of this behavior with the weeping and
fasting that Biblical prophets were said to engage in establishes the
basis for an analogy with the prophet John the Baptist. The irony is that
it shouldn't take a prophet to tell you whether or not you yourself are
going to do something. Eliot nicely accents this ironical stance by using
the particular prophet John the Baptist, a proponent of chastity who was
beheaded at the request of Herod's wife. Prufrock's sense of the
ridiculousness of the situation once again asserts itself in the satiric
inserted comment in the presentation of the image of his own head on the
platter in place of John the Baptist's. Ultimately, though, it is clear to
him that he is exaggerating, to no good effect, for the really important
thing to consider is that he is no longer sure of himself as a human
being. Accordingly, he is truly frightened at the image of the derision of
the "eternal Footman" — which is, perhaps, death as a doorman holding
Prufrock's coat and ushering him out of a life that he never had the
courage to truly live.
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Lines 95-106
Another question sets the tone for this stanza, as Prufrock considers
whether he could ask his "overwhelming question" within the context of the
social trivialities of having tea. The use here of the Egyptian religious
symbol of the scarab beetle, which rolls its excrement into a ball, is an
intricate image compounded of the vulgar and the divine. It precisely
expresses Prufrock's view of his situation.He also imagines himself,
incongruously, as a kind of Lazarus (whom Jesus raised from the dead) at
this tea, who comes back from the dead place inside himself to tell this
woman everything he learned there. But his imaginings carry him off to the
point where he sees her casually asserting that his "overwhelming
question" has nothing to do with anything that she said.
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Lines 107-119
Prufrock's thinking begins to fragment as a result of his frustration
and dread. The stanza begins with an echo of the first line of the
preceding stanza, then repeats a variation that leads into a series of
recollections in two lines beginning with "After" as Prufrock recites a
series of events. In line 113 he acknowledges that he cannot say what he
means. It becomes clear with line 114 that Prufrock believes that he must
adequately and specifically communicate the scope, the depth, the
magnitude of what he thinks and feels about this woman so that the
"meaning" he communicates will correspond with the "meaning" of something
she has previously said or done. But he is so convinced that this will not
happen that he can almost see her turning away from him. Eliot presents
this with an image of his nerves projecting the picture of her failure to
understand onto the screen of his imagination.
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Line 120
Here the ellipsis again emphasizes the full weight of what happens in
this section, the sense of futility Prufrock experiences in the face of
the impossibility of saying "just what I mean!" It further marks the
transition into the state of mind that occurs after the full realization
of this impossibility.
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Lines 121-129
Prufrock emphatically answers the question he has asked in the
preceding two stanzas. His reference to Hamlet, and the phrase in the same
line, "nor was meant to be," calls up an association with Hamlet's
soliloquy, "To be or not to be? — That is the question." Clearly there is
a play on words here. On one level, the asking of the question and the
establishing of the relationship with the woman is "not to be." On another
level, Prufrock is suggesting that he is not "meant to be," implying that
he is meant, perhaps, merely to exist and never to really participate in
life. On an existential level, the line could indicate that Prufrock is
"meant" " not to be," that he might as well be dead for not being able to
live as people live. Prufrock describes himself in a self-satiric way in
lines 123-129, noting that his unimportant presence will help to fill out
a crowd scene, and finally referring to himself as "obtuse," which means
"ignorant" as well as "insensitive." Clearly, Prufrock is not
"insensitive" ; rather, he is far too sensitive. But he is ignorant of how
social relationships provide structure for emotional life. Prufrock
determines that he will never be the main character in his own play,
although he might have a function as "the Fool," or court jester, who can
provide light entertainment. The word "Fool" also alludes to how foolish
he is in his inaction.
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Lines 130-131
The ellipses indicate the passage of time, as Prufrock feels himself
growing older. Line 131 has been variously interpreted as having to do
with some kind of fashion of the times, as well as pertaining to how
people roll up their pant legs to keep from getting them wet as they walk
on the shore. It could also be read as reference to getting shorter as one
gets older, so that the trousers would need to be rolled up.
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Lines 132-134
The questions Prufrock asks here are satiric versions of the serious
question he tried to ask of the woman, and of the useless questions he has
asked of himself. The satire is intensified with his image of himself as
an old man who parts his hair "behind" in order to comb it forward over a
receding hairline. The use of the rhymed couplet here is particularly
interesting because elsewhere the absurdity of the rhymed couplets had
ironic effect. Here the rhyme seems merely silly, as if to reflect the
lack of thought Prufrock intends to put into the things he does as an old
man. There are stories of mermaids falling in love with human men. This
reference also echoes the emotional frustration expressed by the earlier
sea image of the "pair of ragged claws."
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Line 135
Eliot uses this image of the mermaids to signal that Prufrock has come
close to experiencing something wonderful and magical and strange, but
that Prufrock ultimately fails to believe that the singing he has heard
will ever be for him.
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Lines 136-138
The image in these three lines of Prufrock remaining distant and apart
from the emotional life he desires adds meaning to the preceding lines.
Prufrock as an old man walking along the beach and remembering that he had
actually at one time seen the mermaids, as well as heard their singing, is
especially poignant, and helps us see him as someone in crisis. The words
"seen" and "seaward" echo the earlier "silent seas" of line 81.
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Lines 139-141
The use of the first person plural might be convincing confirmation of
the reading of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as a soliloquy or
interior monologue of a divided self. Eliot uses the image of the sea and
"sea-girls," and the repetition of "singing," as well as the associations
now accumulated around the word "overwhelming" (with its meanings of
"submerging" and "engulfing" ) to symbolize the deeply emotional place
which Prufrock could not reconcile with human life in the real world, thus
necessitating the division in himself.It is another of Eliot's ironic
touches that Prufrock's "lovesong" could only be sung to him by human
voices that would wake his divided self to drown in the sea of his own
emotions.
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Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale, 1997.