Opposite to what the title implies, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, is anything but a love song. Our first view of the poem when we read the poem would be that it is a romantic poem, love poem, etc. It is instead contradictory. Although the poem can be represented with several interpretations, after careful reading of the poem, the several basic themes can be expressed by one central idea. In the poem, the narrator, J. Alfred Prufrock, portrays his disappointment with the society he lives in. By interpreting aspects of imagery, speaker and intended audience, one can easily evaluate Prufrock's views of life. His interpretation of everyday life can be described as an empty, miserable, and repetitive. Thus, in the following parts of the essay I am going to give brief explaining on his use of poetic devices to depict his character.
Early on in the poem, Eliot creates a scene that does not seem very fascinating. Prufrock describes his surrounding on an evening out with phrases that indicate melancholy and depression. In line 6, Prufrock describes the night as "restless" and says that the streets are "tedious arguments of insidious intent". From this the reader can conclude a certain discontentment that Prufrock has with his surroundings. He refers to his, and his companions', destination as "one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells". Even though these descriptions leave the reader only approximately 10 lines into the poem, we already have a feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction from Prufrock about his life. 'The muttering retreats' informs us that the chatting is diminishing, people are going back home, and there is a feeling of absolute quietness in prufrock's world.
As the poem continues, the reader will overcome even more imagery that conveys Prufrock's discontentment with his surroundings. Prufrock talks of the "yellow fog" that "rubs its back upon the window-panes" and the "yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes". He also mentions the "soot that falls from chimneys". Later on in the poem, Prufrock refers to smoke again while describing the streets he is walking on. All this imagery leaves the reader feeling that the place Prufrock is at is dark and hazy and not at all welcoming.
Among the feelings that Prufrock expresses in this poem, no feeling comes across more clearly than his feeling of loneliness and wasted time. We get the feeling that Prufrock, who is aging, would do things differently if given another chance. In lines 49-54, Prufrock asserts his overall boredom with life. He says he has "known them all already, known them all-have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons". From this we can infer that Prufrock seems to feel as if his life is over and he has no more to offer. He makes statements similar to this throughout the poem. He proclaims to have known "the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase" and the "arms that are braceleted and white and bare". We get more of a sense of Prufrock's lack of expectation of life with his many references to time. In lines 24-34, he claims there is time to "meet faces", "murder and create", have a "hundred indecisions" and a "hundred visions and revisions". It is not as though Prufrock is doing this in a hopeful manner, though. Instead we get the impression that he is reflecting on time as if it is plentiful only if you take advantage of it and perhaps he feels he did not.
Another aspect of this poem that is important is the interpretation of it is the speaker and the audience. Although the audience is never clearly known, several assumptions can be made. It seems as though Prufrock is simply reflecting on life to himself. He makes several statements that would allow a reader to arrive at this conclusion. Throughout the poem, he asks several rhetorical questions of himself. In line 62, he asks "and how should I presume?". He asks himself the same question again in line 68 and then follows with another "and how should I begin?". These questions lead the reader to believe that the poem represents Prufrock's inner-thoughts about life. This is important to consider because if the audience was anyone but Prufrock himself, the poem would more than likely take a very different course.
Once you get past the initial false impression about the poem due to its misleading title, you can easily see that this is a poem about what happens if you do not make the most of your life. Prufrock is a character that we all can learn something from. Through interpretations of this poem, one can assume that even though a person's life may seem to be normal and in fact successful, sometimes that person may have a totally different view of their own life. From the poem we can conclude that Prufrock's life was like many others during the time it was written. It talks of parties, drinking, and lovely ladies. This did not, however, bring his happiness.
Prufrock is a timid man. He is extremely conscious of what others think of him and this has a great effect of his actions. He also extremely self-conscious with his appearance and thinks that people talk about what he looks like and what he wears. Other's opinion of Prufrock bothers him so much so that he does not want to "disturb the universe" by making an entrance into it.
Finally, the last part of the poem, Prufrock show's his final despair in life. He cannot bring himself to tell the woman that he is in love with how he really feels. However, if he ever did decide to tell her, it would come out as a mess. He finds himself with no real role in life. He is no "Prince Hamlet, nor was he meant to be," but rather an "attendant lord," or sometimes "the Fool." He hears the mermaids singing, but he thinks: "I do not think they will sing to me."
As he aged, Prufrock was left very disappointed with his life. In the end, he discusses how he will behave in his old age and finally describes death as what can be interpreted as drowning in the sea when he compares himself to a crab at the bottom of the ocean floor. He is so ashamed of himself that he doesn't want to come up with the mermaid. With this last stanza he completes the vertical descent that Eliot has been deploying throughout the poem. He has plunged into his Dante's Que underworld and we are forced to accompany him.
