EXAM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE: TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY

Analyse the excerpt from T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with emphasis on:
1. theme and motif
2. modernist time
3. figures of speech

Use no more than 500 words.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

MARKING SCHEME: 9 + 1 = 10
3 items x 3 points = 9 points
Ex officio – 1 point

SUMMARY “THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK”

Summary
This poem, the earliest of Eliot’s major works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published
until 1915. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man—
overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seems to
be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by
somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to “dare” an
approach to the woman: In his mind he hears the comments others make about his inadequacies,
and he chides himself for “presuming” emotional interaction could be possible at all. The poem
moves from a series of fairly concrete (for Eliot) physical settings—a cityscape (the famous
“patient etherised upon a table”) and several interiors (women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee
spoons, fireplaces)—to a series of vague ocean images conveying Prufrock’s emotional distance
from the world as he comes to recognize his second-rate status (“I am not Prince Hamlet’).
“Prufrock” is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character
achieved.

Form
“Prufrock” is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of poem popular with Eliot’s
predecessors. Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. Three things characterize
the dramatic monologue, according to M.H. Abrams. First, they are the utterances of a specific
individual (not the poet) at a specific moment in time. Secondly, the monologue is specifically
directed at a listener or listeners whose presence is not directly referenced but is merely suggested
in the speaker’s words. Third, the primary focus is the development and revelation of the speaker’s
character. Eliot modernizes the form by removing the implied listeners and focusing on Prufrock’s
interiority and isolation. The epigraph to this poem, from Dante’s Inferno, describes Prufrock’s
ideal listener: one who is as lost as the speaker and will never betray to the world the content of
Prufrock’s present confessions. In the world Prufrock describes, though, no such sympathetic
figure exists, and he must, therefore, be content with silent reflection. In its focus on character and
its dramatic sensibility, “Prufrock” anticipates Eliot’s later, dramatic works.

The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random. While sections of the poem may
resemble free verse, in reality, “Prufrock” is a carefully structured amalgamation of poetic forms.
The bits and pieces of rhyme become much more apparent when the poem is read aloud. One of
the most prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of refrains. Prufrock’s continual
return to the “women [who] come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” and his recurrent
questionings (“how should I presume?”) and pessimistic appraisals (“That is not it, at all.”) both
reference an earlier poetic tradition and help Eliot describe the consciousness of a modern, neurotic
individual. Prufrock’s obsessiveness is aesthetic, but it is also a sign of compulsiveness and
isolation. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of sonnet form, particularly at
the poem’s conclusion. The three three-line stanzas are rhymed as the conclusion of a Petrarchan
sonnet would be, but their pessimistic, anti-romantic content, coupled with the despairing
interjection, “I do not think they (the mermaids) would sing to me,” creates a contrast that
comments bitterly on the bleakness of modernity.
Commentary
“Prufrock” displays the two most important characteristics of Eliot’s early poetry. First, it is
strongly influenced by the French Symbolists, like Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, whom
Eliot had been reading almost constantly while writing the poem. From the Symbolists, Eliot takes
his sensuous language and eye for unnerving or anti-aesthetic detail that nevertheless contributes
to the overall beauty of the poem (the yellow smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are
two good examples of this). The Symbolists, too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot
creates with Prufrock: the moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the
Symbolists would have been more likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist, Eliot
chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for the common man.

The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. Eliot
sustained his interest in fragmentation and its applications throughout his career, and his use of the
technique changes in important ways across his body of work: Here, the subjects undergoing
fragmentation (and reassembly) are mental focus and certain sets of imagery; in The Waste Land,
it is modern culture that splinters; in the Four Quartets we find the fragments of attempted
philosophical systems. Eliot’s use of bits and pieces of formal structure suggests that
fragmentation, although anxiety-provoking, is nevertheless productive; had he chosen to write in
free verse, the poem would have seemed much more nihilistic. The kinds of imagery Eliot uses
also suggest that something new can be made from the ruins: The series of hypothetical encounters
at the poem’s center are iterated and discontinuous but nevertheless lead to a sort of epiphany
(albeit a dark one) rather than just leading nowhere. Eliot also introduces an image that will recur
in his later poetry, that of the scavenger. Prufrock thinks that he “should have been a pair of ragged
claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Crabs are scavengers, garbage-eaters who live
off refuse that makes its way to the sea floor. Eliot’s discussions of his own poetic technique (see
especially his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”) suggest that making something
beautiful out of the refuse of modern life, as a crab sustains and nourishes itself on garbage, may,
in fact, be the highest form of art. At the very least, this notion subverts romantic ideals about art;
at best, it suggests that fragments may become reintegrated, that art may be in some way
therapeutic for a broken modern world. In The Waste Land, crabs become rats, and the optimism
disappears, but here Eliot seems to assert only the limitless potential of scavenging.

“Prufrock” ends with the hero assigning himself a role in one of Shakespeare’s plays: While he is
no Hamlet, he may yet be useful and important as “an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a
progress, start a scene or two...” This implies that there is still a continuity between Shakespeare’s
world and ours, that Hamlet is still relevant to us and that we are still part of a world that could
produce something like Shakespeare’s plays. Implicit in this, of course, is the suggestion that Eliot,
who has created an “attendant lord,” may now go on to create another Hamlet. While “Prufrock”
ends with a devaluation of its hero, it exalts its creator. Or does it? The last line of the poem
suggests otherwise—that when the world intrudes, when “human voices wake us,” the dream is
shattered: “we drown.” With this single line, Eliot dismantles the romantic notion that poetic
genius is all that is needed to triumph over the destructive, impersonal forces of the modern world.
In reality, Eliot the poet is little better than his creation: He differs from Prufrock only by retaining
a bit of hubris, which shows through from time to time. Eliot’s poetic creation, thus, mirrors
Prufrock’s soliloquy: Both are an expression of aesthetic ability and sensitivity that seems to have
no place in the modern world. This realistic, anti-romantic outlook sets the stage for Eliot’s later
works, including The Waste Land.

THEMES, MOTIFS & SYMBOLS

Themes
The Damaged Psyche of Humanity
Like many modernist writers, Eliot wanted his poetry to express the fragile psychological state of
humanity in the twentieth century. The passing of Victorian ideals and the trauma of World War I
challenged cultural notions of masculine identity, causing artists to question the romantic literary
ideal of a visionary-poet capable of changing the world through verse. Modernist writers wanted
to capture their transformed world, which they perceived as fractured, alienated, and denigrated.
Europe lost an entire generation of young men to the horrors of the so-called Great War, causing
a general crisis of masculinity as survivors struggled to find their place in a radically altered
society. As for England, the aftershocks of World War I directly contributed to the dissolution of
the British Empire. Eliot saw society as paralyzed and wounded, and he imagined that culture was
crumbling and dissolving. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917) demonstrates this sense
of indecisive paralysis as the titular Speaker wonders whether he should eat a piece of fruit, make
a radical change, or if he has the fortitude to keep living. Humanity’s collectively damaged psyche
prevented people from communicating with one another, an idea that Eliot explored in many
works, including “A Game of Chess” (the second part of The Waste Land) and “The Hollow Men.”

The Power of Literary History

Eliot maintained great reverence for myth and the Western literary Canon, and he packed his work
full of Allusions, quotations, footnotes, and scholarly Exegeses. In “The Tradition and the
Individual Talent,” an essay first published in 1919, Eliot praises the literary tradition and states
that the best writers are those who write with a sense of continuity with those writers who came
before, as if all of literature constituted a stream in which each new writer must enter and swim.
Only the very best new work will subtly shift the stream’s current and thus improve the literary
tradition. Eliot also argued that the literary past must be integrated into contemporary poetry. But
the poet must guard against excessive academic knowledge and distill only the most essential bits
of the past into a poem, thereby enlightening readers. The Waste Land juxtaposes fragments of
various elements of literary and mythic traditions with scenes and sounds from modern life. The
effect of this poetic collage is both a reinterpretation of canonical texts and a historical context for
his examination of society and humanity.

The Changing Nature of Gender Roles

Over the course of Eliot’s life, gender roles and sexuality became increasingly flexible, and Eliot
reflected those changes in his work. In the repressive Victorian Era of the nineteenth century,
women were confined to the domestic sphere, sexuality was not discussed or publicly explored,
and a puritanical atmosphere dictated most social interactions. Queen Victoria’s death in 1901
helped usher in a new era of excess and forthrightness, now called the Edwardian Age, which
lasted until 1910. World War I, from 1914 to 1918, further transformed society, as people felt both
increasingly alienated from one another and empowered to break social mores. English women
began agitating in earnest for the right to vote in 1918, and the flappers of the Jazz Age began
smoking and drinking alcohol in public. Women were allowed to attend school, and women who
could afford it continued their education at those universities that began accepting women in the
early twentieth century. Modernist writers created gay and lesbian characters and re-imagined
masculinity and femininity as characteristics people could assume or shrug off rather than as
absolute identities dictated by society.

Eliot simultaneously lauded the end of the Victorian era and expressed concern about the freedoms
inherent in the modern age. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” reflects the feelings of
emasculation experienced by many men as they returned home from World War I to find women
empowered by their new role as wage earners. Prufrock, unable to make a decision, watches
women wander in and out of a room, “talking of Michelangelo” (14), and elsewhere admires their
downy, bare arms. A disdain for unchecked sexuality appears in both “Sweeney Among the
Nightingales” (1918) and The Waste Land. The latter portrays rape, prostitution, a conversation
about abortion, and other incidences of nonreproductive sexuality. Nevertheless, the poem’s
central character, Tiresias, is a hermaphrodite—and his powers of prophesy and transformation
are, in some sense, due to his male and female genitalia. With Tiresias, Eliot creates a character
that embodies wholeness, represented by the two genders coming together in one body.

Motifs
Fragmentation
Eliot used fragmentation in his poetry both to demonstrate the chaotic state of modern existence
and to juxtapose literary texts against one another. In Eliot’s view, humanity’s psyche had been
shattered by World War I and by the collapse of the British Empire. Collaging bits and pieces of
dialogue, images, scholarly ideas, foreign words, formal styles, and Tones within one poetic work
was a way for Eliot to represent humanity’s damaged psyche and the modern world, with its
barrage of sensory perceptions. Critics read the following line from The Waste Land as a statement
of Eliot’s poetic project: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” (431). Practically every
line in The Waste Land echoes an academic work or canonical literary text, and many lines also
have long footnotes written by Eliot as an attempt to explain his references and to encourage his
readers to educate themselves by delving deeper into his sources. These echoes and references are
fragments themselves, since Eliot includes only parts, rather than whole texts from the Canon.
Using these fragments, Eliot tries to highlight recurrent themes and images in the literary tradition,
as well as to place his ideas about the contemporary state of humanity along the spectrum of
history.

Mythic and Religious Ritual

Eliot’s tremendous knowledge of myth, religious ritual, academic works, and key books in the
literary tradition informs every aspect of his poetry. He filled his poems with references to both
the obscure and the well known, thereby teaching his readers as he writes. In his notes to The
Waste Land, Eliot explains the crucial role played by religious symbols and myths. He drew
heavily from ancient fertility rituals, in which the fertility of the land was linked to the health of
the Fisher King, a wounded figure who could be healed through the sacrifice of an effigy. The
Fisher King is, in turn, linked to the Holy Grail legends, in which a knight quests to find the grail,
the only object capable of healing the land. Ultimately, ritual fails as the tool for healing the
wasteland, even as Eliot presents alternative religious possibilities, including Hindu chants,
Buddhist speeches, and pagan ceremonies. Later poems take their images almost exclusively from
Christianity, such as the echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in “The Hollow Men” and the retelling of the
story of the wise men in “Journey of the Magi” (1927).

Infertility
Eliot envisioned the modern world as a wasteland, in which neither the land nor the people could
conceive. In The Waste Land, various characters are sexually frustrated or dysfunctional, unable
to cope with either reproductive or nonreproductive sexuality: the Fisher King represents damaged
sexuality (according to myth, his impotence causes the land to wither and dry up), Tiresias
represents confused or ambiguous sexuality, and the women chattering in “A Game of Chess”
represent an out-of-control sexuality. World War I not only eradicated an entire generation of
young men in Europe but also ruined the land. Trench warfare and chemical weapons, the two
primary methods by which the war was fought, decimated plant life, leaving behind detritus and
carnage. In “The Hollow Men,” the speaker discusses the dead land, now filled with stone and
cacti. Corpses salute the stars with their upraised hands, stiffened from rigor mortis. Trying to
process the destruction has caused the speaker’s mind to become infertile: his head has been filled
with straw, and he is now unable to think properly, to perceive accurately, or to conceive of images
or thoughts.
Symbols
Water
In Eliot’s poetry, water symbolizes both life and death. Eliot’s characters wait for water to quench
their thirst, watch rivers overflow their banks, cry for rain to quench the dry earth, and pass by
fetid pools of standing water. Although water has the regenerative possibility of restoring life and
fertility, it can also lead to drowning and death, as in the case of Phlebas the sailor from The Waste
Land. Traditionally, water can imply baptism, Christianity, and the figure of Jesus Christ, and Eliot
draws upon these traditional meanings: water cleanses, water provides solace, and water brings
relief elsewhere in The Waste Land and in “Little Gidding,” the fourth part of Four Quartets.
Prufrock hears the seductive calls of mermaids as he walks along the shore in “The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock,” but, like Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey (ca. 800b.c.e.), he realizes that a
malicious intent lies behind the sweet voices: the poem concludes “we drown” (131). Eliot thus
cautions us to beware of simple solutions or cures, for what looks innocuous might turn out to be
very dangerous.

The Fisher King

The Fisher King is the central character in The Waste Land. While writing his long poem, Eliot
drew on From Ritual to Romance, a 1920 book about the legend of the Holy Grail by Miss Jessie
L. Weston, for many of his symbols and images. Weston’s book examined the connections
between ancient fertility rites and Christianity, including following the evolution of the Fisher
King into early representations of Jesus Christ as a fish. Traditionally, the impotence or death of
the Fisher King brought unhappiness and famine. Eliot saw the Fisher King as symbolic of
humanity, robbed of its sexual potency in the modern world and connected to the meaninglessness
of urban existence. But the Fisher King also stands in for Christ and other religious figures
associated with divine resurrection and rebirth. The speaker of “What the Thunder Said” fishes
from the banks of the Thames toward the end of the poem as the thunder sounds Hindu chants into
the air. Eliot’s scene echoes the scene in the Bible in which Christ performs one of his miracles:
Christ manages to feed his multitude of followers by the Sea of Galilee with just a small amount
of fish.
Music and Singing
Like most modernist writers, Eliot was interested in the divide between high and low culture,
which he symbolized using music. He believed that high culture, including art, opera, and drama,
was in decline while popular culture was on the rise. In The Waste Land, Eliot blended high culture
with low culture by juxtaposing lyrics from an opera by Richard Wagner with songs from pubs,
American ragtime, and Australian troops. Eliot splices nursery rhymes with phrases from the
Lord’s Prayer in “The Hollow Men,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is, as the title,
implies a song, with various lines repeated as refrains. That poem ends with the song of mermaids
luring humans to their deaths by drowning—a scene that echoes Odysseus’s interactions with the
Sirens in the Odyssey. Music thus becomes another way in which Eliot collages and references
books from past literary traditions. Elsewhere Eliot uses lyrics as a kind of chorus, seconding and
echoing the action of the poem, much as the chorus functions in Greek tragedies.

J. Alfred Prufrock guides a companion through the smoggy, lurid streets of modern London as he
ponders his “overwhelming question” and worries that he is running out of time “for a hundred
indecisions.”
Prufrock visits a party of sophisticated women who “come and go / Talking of Michelangelo,” but
he feels self-conscious of his slender, balding appearance. Bored at the prospect of engaging in
social activity, he wishes to withdraw.
Prufrock becomes lost in thought, wondering whether he should “force the moment to its crisis”
or “squeeze the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question.” However,
he feels unable to express the nature of either his crisis or his question.
He considers himself as a side character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, an “attendant lord” or “Fool”
who plays an insignificant part in life’s drama. As the poem ends, Prufrock imagines himself
strolling down the beach, listening to “mermaids singing, each to each” but not to him. He dreams
of lingering “in the chambers of the sea” until “human voices wake us and we drown.”

Lines 1–12
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” begins with an epigraph from Dante’s
Inferno that sets a tone of both despair and candor. The condemned, corrupt statesman Guido da
Montefeltro tells Dante that he will divulge his sinful story, for he doubts Dante will ever return
to the mortal world. With the opening line, “Let us go then, you and I,” Prufrock invites readers
to hear his story, laced as it is with doubt, failure, and ruin. The “you” Prufrock addresses is both
an unnamed companion as well as readers of the poem.

Prufrock moves through a London landscape where “the evening is spread out against the sky /
Like a patient etherized upon a table.” As the journey passes through “half-deserted streets,”
“one-night cheap hotels,” and “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells,” the bleak atmosphere
thickens as Prufrock paints a portrait of a dissolute city. Here Prufrock engages in a mode of
projection, using the physical city to reveal aspects of his own psychology. When Prufrock
describes

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
he sees echoes of his own mental processes in his urban surroundings. The “overwhelming
question” figures as a recurring obsession, one which so lurks over his thoughts that Prufrock
imagines that the streets he walks down lead to that very question. The mystery of the question—
“‘What is it?’”—gives the poem an added propulsion. Prufrock refuses to tell, diverting with the
line “Let us go and make our visit.”

Lines 13–34
Prufrock briefly brings us to a festive parlor, where “women come and go / Talking of
Michelangelo.” This location seems to be the “visit,” but it proves fleeting, for his attention
returns to an outdoor scene in which a yellow, cat-like smog “rubs its back upon the window-
panes.”

Prufrock falls into a meditation, reminding himself that “indeed there will be time,” but he does
not say why he desires such consolation. Nor is it clear what he desires to do with time, for
Prufrock’s aims are scattered and abstract: “time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you
meet,” “time to murder and create,” and “time yet for a hundred indecisions.” He has limited
time to act, but he desires more time to dither and revise.
Lines 35–74
The scene suddenly shifts back to the parlor of sophisticated women “talking of Michelangelo.”
By this point, the narrative structure of the poem is more a series of fragments, connected only
by the order in which they pass through Prufrock’s consciousness. Prufrock, ascending the stair
(perhaps to the same parlor), deliberates and considers descending, but he fears that “they will
say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’” Prufrock is unsure, both about...

(The entire section is 985 words.)

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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Homework Help Questions
What is the "It" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?What the "it" is.
Is your question refering to the "it" that is mentioned in the first stanza of this excellent poem?
Let us remind ourselves of the context of this quote. J. Alfred Prufrock is walking through
some...

What is the summary of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is written in the form of a dramatic monologue and
expresses Prufrock’s longing, alienation, and despair. Addressed to an unknown companion that
at times seems...

What is the theme of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

According to the enotes Study Guide on Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," three
themes exist in the poem: Alienation and Loneliness Time Doubt and Ambiguity The speaker is
so alone and...

In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," what kind of person is J. Alfred Prufrock?

Prufrock is a shy, lonely, insecure, middle-aged individual. The poem offers us a direct insight
into his confused, questing, wandering mind. He appears trapped in his own thoughts, unable
to...

In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," what is the major conflict presented in the poem?

The major conflict of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is an internal conflict
for the narrator. In the poem, he is speaking to a desired lover, and it is clear that he wishes to...

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Analysis of Poem: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot
Updated on January 6, 2020
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T.S.ELIOT
T.S.ELIOT | Source
T.S.Eliot and A Summary of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
One of the first true modernist poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a shifting,
repetitive monologue, the thoughts of a mature male as he searches for love and meaning in an
uncertain, twilight world.

T.S.Eliot wrote his dubious love song in 1910/11 but J.Alfred Prufrock didn't appear in print
until June 1915, when editor Harriet Monroe, with Ezra Pound's recommendation, published it in
the journal Poetry. The poem was radically different to the more genteel accepted verse of the
times and helped to kick-start the modernist movement.

Eliot's poem caught the changes in consciousness perfectly. At the time of writing, class systems
that had been in place for centuries were under pressure like never before. Society was changing,
and a new order was forming. World War 1 was on the horizon and the struggles for power were
beginning to alter the way people lived and thought and loved.
J. Alfred Prufrock is a respectable character but has seen the seedier side of life. He's getting on
in years and is acutely aware of what he's become, measuring his life in coffee spoons, losing his
hair, turning thin. He's due for a refresh, a personal revolution, but doesn't know where to start.

Yet he still wants to make his mark on the world, even 'disturb the universe' whilst throughout
the poem he appears nervous, isolated and lacking in confidence. He may be intelligent, he may
have experience but he doesn't seem to trust in anyone or anything. But who can blame him? The
world is crumbling and with it comes the fragmentation of human sensibility.
Prufrock is in a life or death situation, between heaven and hell. The city is half-deserted. You
can sense the atmosphere isn't quite right. He's looking for answers.

The epigraph, in Italian, is a quotation from Dante's Inferno, canto 27. Dante faces the spirit of
one hellbound Guido da Montefeltro, a false advisor, and the two trade questions and answers.
It's an important lead in to the poem itself as the quote conveys the idea that the answer will be
given (by Guido) because no man has ever returned to Earth alive from the hellish abyss.
T.S.Eliot's poem is the story of a modern day Guido living in a smoky, city hell. He is insecure,
lonely and loveless.

Themes in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Love

Loneliness

Relationships

Society

Time

Generation Gap

Isolation

Psychological Issues

Mental Stability

Hero Worship
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Rhyme and Metre (Meter) - Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is 131 lines long and is mostly loose rhyming, that is, there
is no consistent rhyme scheme and no regular pattern to the rhythm.

But there are substantial sections with rhyme:

for example lines 23-67 contain plenty of full and slant rhyme - street/meet, create/plate,
dare/stair/hair, room/presume - and a good proportion of the rest of the poem has rhyme.
Lines 37-48 in particular have an unusual set of rhymes which not only help to reinforce
Prufrock's neurotic personality but add a comic effect to the idea that he might dare to disturb the
universe, in one minute. Check out dare/stair/hair and thin/chin/pin/thin whilst time and dare
repeat towards the end of the stanza.
These rhymes certainly give the sense of song and bring a lyrical feel to the poem.
T.S. Eliot was a great believer in using both traditional and innovative poetic techniques and
devices in his work and this poem reflects this belief.

So, for example, loose iambic pentameter, tetrameter and trimeter pop up now and again to help
keep the poem on track as it heads out into the yellow fog of the cityscape.
Note the fact that lines vary from 3 syllables to 20 (lines 45 and 102), and with well placed
enjambment the reader's ability to scan and understand can be tested to the full.
This shifting, repetitive poem is a parody of a love song; it flows then stumbles and hesitates its
way through the life of a middle aged male who can't decide where he stands in the world. Will
he venture out to find the love of his life? Now is the time to visit that room where the women
come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.
But Prufrock, the tentative male, envisages being ridiculed for having a bald patch. Time is
running out, or is it? Note the reference to the Andrew Marvell poem To His Coy Mistress in line
23 and Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night in line 52 and Prince Hamlet in line 111.

Eliot also used French poet Jules LaForgue as inspiration for his repeated women who come and
go talking of Michelangelo. "Dans la piece les femmes vont et viennent / En parlant des maîtres
de Sienne." LaForgue was one of the innovators of the interior monologue and Eliot certainly
exploited this technique to the full in Prufrock.

There are fragments of images, gloomy cityscapes, reflective inner thoughts and an uneasy
questioning self that is the anti-hero Prufrock. He is both ditherer and dreamer, a split personality
who procrastinates, who is caught between fantasy and reality.

Further Analysis of Prufrock

Prufrock is lacking in self esteem and perhaps loathes himself. How do we know this? Well, note
the imagery in lines 57- 61 when he compares himself to an insect pinned and wriggling on the
wall, and again in lines 73/74 in which he sees himself as a lowly crustacean on the sea floor.

The questions continue as the narrative progresses, an echo of the scene from Dante - will
Prufrock have the courage to act, will he have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? He
makes us think that he has sacrificed much to get to this point in his life. He has fasted, prayed,
wept, afraid for the future.

But how much of this is fiction dreamt up by a forlorn man past his best, who is constantly
frustrated because It is impossible to say just what I mean!

Is this the outcome of Prufrock's fear of rejection? He cannot bring himself to commit to his
vision - poetic, religious, amorous - he cannot even eat a peach due to a deep seated angst.
In the end he succumbs to harsh reality whilst fantasising about the mermaids who sing to each
other but who will never sing to him. Prufrock just can't snap out of this self-imposed existential
mindset. What is it he needs? Love, drugs, therapy?

Eliot's poem is full of metaphor and simile, simple rhyme and complex rhythms. By portraying
Prufrock as an anxious, neurotic individual he invites us to use his work of art as a mirror. Read
it out loud, slowly, and its intelligence and music will emerge.
No matter what sort of life we lead we might question, dare and invite others to share, before
time and fate take their toll. So you want to know how to change the universe? Sink your teeth
into a juicy peach.

Personification in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Eliot uses the energies of the cat to help the reader focus in on the smoke and fog of the
cityscape. Strong repeated rhyme and assonance further enrich the experience in lines 15-22.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

Dante’s Hell features a lot of really smart people who repeat utterly pointless physical
gestures over and over again in small, cramped spaces.