Download Johnson 1 Analysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ... and more Summaries Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Johnson 1 Analysis of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a true monologue of literature’s modern man. Prufrock fills the role of the anticlimactic antihero as he attempts to confess his inner secrets to the reader. His life is measured in the mundane activities of the everyday, but underneath this veil of societal norms lurks an unsatisfied desire for more. Eliot plays with Prufrock’s contrasting desire to both fit the expectations of society and to brave the taboo, exposing his inevitable loneliness and indecisive nature. Eliot uses distinctive language to give an intriguing and dynamic portrayal of Prufrock’s inescapable solitude. He opens with unique imagery that sets the mood of the poem by saying “When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon the table,” (Eliot line 23). It is the setting being described here, but it also applies to Prufrock and the tone of what he is about to confess. He, like the patient, feels numb and spread out for examination before an audience. Anthony Cuda argues in his article “T. S. Eliot's Etherized Patient” that “the tragedy of the poem consists in Prufrock's fear of and failure to risk vulnerability, these lines configure that fear with a precise correlative for paralysis. For Eliot, the etherized patient is a body whose dulled awareness remains but who cannot move to protect itself.” Eliot’s comparison of the patient paralyzed foreshadows Prufrock’s end. As a mere exposed observer to his own life, he hopes of getting off the table and doing something, but his body stays weighted down and his mind numb. This position of a vulnerable patient laid out also expresses Prufrock’s insecurity as he portrays how he feels viewed by others in society. He believes “They will say: how his hair is growing thin!” and later, “...but how his arms and legs are thin!” (Eliot 41, 44). Johnson 2 Prufrock feels he is always being judged and examined by the community around him. He feels inadequate and incapable of reaching the standards set by society. These feelings of insignificance lead him to compare being in society to being an insect on a pin, “My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin” he continues, “The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,/ And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,/ When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,” (Eliot 43, 5658). The pin that holds his necktie pins him on display, squirming for the “eyes” of public inspection just like a bug. He is surrounded by people and wears all the right things to fit in, yet he still feels isolated and detached from them. This relationship echoes that of the doctor and anesthetized patient from the beginning of the poem. Both analogies are cold, sterile, and calculatedly unfeeling. The warmth of love and connection are absent from Prufrock’s relationships. Because he feels this way he describes others by their single parts and not as a whole; for example, “And I have known the arms already, known them all /Arms that are braceleted and white and bare/ (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)” (Eliot 6163). Prufrock has segregated and dissected those around him to reflect his own feelings of isolation. Although he himself is part of the community, he feels unincluded from the whole. This is like the arms he describes. He focuses on a single, independently moving limb instead of on the entire person, showing how he is unavoidably embodied in the whole of society, but also is distinctly separate. Because of Prufrock’s intense insecurities he feels almost as if he should not have existed as a person. He says “I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” (Eliot 7374). Valentin Videnov, author of “Human Voices in Silent Seas: A Reading of Eliot’s ‘Love Song,” believes this quote implies that Prufrock is off center and “seems to long Johnson 5 through life just as one would float directionless in an endless sea, but unfortunately, for Prufrock, life is not endless and when the time came for him to awake from his ineffectual dreams the realities of his bleak indecisive life overwhelmed him. Eliot has created Prufrock trapped in the liminal space of an upstanding society and disreputable nightlife, lacking all courage and commitment, Prufrock flails between the two unable to grasp contentment. He talks, questions, and presumes but is incapable of real action. He has undermined all opportunities for felicity in life by indulging every insecurity and ignoring every notion to act. Consequently, the only development produced by Prufrock’s stagnancy has been a world built up of regret and isolation. Works Cited Blum, Margaret Morton. “The Fool in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Modern Language Johnson 6 Notes Vol. 72, No. 6: 424426. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957. JSTOR. Web. 3 Apr. 2015. Cuda, Anthony. "T. S. Eliot's Etherized Patient." Twentieth Century Literature 50.4 (2004): 394420. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Apr. 2015. Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Literature a Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, Peter Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. 2004. 547551. Print. Videnov, Valentin A. "Human Voices In Silent Seas: A Reading Of Eliot's Love Song." Explicator 67.2 (2009): 126130. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Apr. 2015.