Boo
The speaker of this ironic monologue is a modern, urban man who, like many of his kind, feels isolated and incapable of decisive action. Irony is apparent from the title, for this is not a conventional love song. Prufrock would like to speak of love to a woman, but he does not dare.
The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante's INFERNO, suggesting that Prufrock is one of the damned and that he speaks only because he is sure no one will listen. Since the reader is overhearing his thoughts, the poem seems at first rather incoherent. But Prufrock repeats certain phrases and returns to certain core ideas as the poem progresses. The "you and I" of the opening line includes the reader, ...
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stanza creates an image of the dull, damp autumn evening when the tea party will take place. In the rest of the poem Prufrock imagines his arrival, his attempt to converse intimately with the woman whose love he seeks, and his ultimate failure to make her understand him. Prufrock has attended such parties many times and knows how it will be, and this knowledge makes him hesitate out of fear that any attempt to push beyond mere polite conversation, to make some claim on the woman's affections, will meet with a frustratingly polite refusal.
So Prufrock simultaneously plans his approach and tells himself that he can put off the action. The phrase "There will be time," repeated five times between lines 23 and 36, represents his hesitation and delay. When he says in lines 44 and 45 "Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?," the universe he is referring to is his small social circle of middle-class acquaintances. He would disturb its equilibrium if he actually tried to sing a "love song" to ...
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a pathetic figure, not grand enough to be tragic.
The Unneccessary Comlexity of Life Revealed in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Kapil Rajwani, Junior
T.S. Eliot in his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," has made a case for the unnecessary complexity of life. A complexity which has been created by society and continues to fool society to an extent where people do not realize it. Everything that exists, all the way down to the necktie, is a facade, a mask whereby people hide from each other.
J. Alfred Prufrock thinks to himself how his necktie is "rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin," a clear reference to society and its ideals. The necktie is shown as expensive ...
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Boo. (2004, January 12). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Boo/1338
"Boo." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 12 Jan. 2004. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Boo/1338>
"Boo." Essayworld.com. January 12, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Boo/1338.
"Boo." Essayworld.com. January 12, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Boo/1338.
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