“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.” (Eliot 31-34)
In this passage of four lines, Prufrock seems to expect to meet a person, as the line “time for you and time for me” implies. While it is clueless to say who the expected person is, I assume it’s a female based on the following lines and the title of the poem. The author depicts that just for the taking of a toast and tea, Prufrock already has changed his mind for hundreds time. Going thru the cycle of making up one mind then soon erasing it, Prufrock’s battle with his inner voice is disclosed. He wishes he can man up and go interact with this female, yet anxiety creeps on him and feeds him fear. It eventually connects back to the theme of this poem, love. It is common and normal for a person to feel nervous or arbitrary to make a decision when in love. Eliot once again deploys the objective correlative technique as he does throughout the whole poem. (Shrestha) He doesn’t directly give away Prufrock’s personality to readers. Instead, he uses the image of the environment to convey Prufrock’s consciousness. In this passage specifically, the object is the concept of time. I personally am amused by the objective correlative technique. I find it quite clever and appealing.
Shrestha, Roma. “Objective Correlative in Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” BachelorandMaster, 4 Sep. 2017, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/objective-correlative-in-the-love-song.html.
This would be clearer if you explained what you mean by “the objective correlative technique” here. Could Prufrock’s “you” be the reader?