Great Works II

Outwardly, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot seemed like a straightforward poem by the use of simple ‘everyday’ words. While reading Eliot’s poem, I felt as if I was looking through J. Alfred Prufrock’s eyes; I was very engaged. Reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I felt at ease, and I related to some of the daily occurrences described in Eliot’s poem.By the end of the first stanza, I was hooked on “Love Song.” I loved how the romantic tone of the line “Let us go then, you and I” is contrasted with the grimy imagery of a “patient etherized upon a table” (pg 541). From my observation, Prufrock is an individual that is in touch with his interiority. He knows that is a romantic, yet he dampens his wishes with reality—he conforms to society, molding himself to what society has to offer, such as “one-night cheap hotels” and “sawdust restaurants.” The ironic conflict between the romantic and the grimy tones seems surreal; it represents the fragmentation of the inferior and exterior of the protagonist in Eliot’s poem. Prufrock’s ideology clashes with the way things actually are in the world around him. What I related to the most in “Love Song” is Prufrock’s realization and perspective. From my understanding of the poem, he is stuck in a mundane routine that, I assume, everyone else in the society faces. I imagine Prufrock as an ‘Average Joe’ that has a mediocre job that pays just enough for him to get by—essentially, I see him as a rat stuck in a labyrinth that is tired of running around the same maze, but he keeps doing it anyways because that environment is what he has and knows. The sentence “There will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” screams of Prufrock’s resentment of his routine (not essentially the people that he meets). In addition to the previous sentence, “And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions” represents the maze of routine that he’s in.Prufrock’s stream of consciousness starts out from his awareness of the world around him, and this then turns into self-consciousness. The seventh stanza clearly spells out his self-consciousness: he is critical about the “bald spot” in his hair, the way his clothes hang on him, and even the way people criticize him (“They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!””). On page 452, his questions of “Do I dare disturb the universe?” and “How should I presume?” marks his feelings of doubt on his desire to change, to not go through “a hundred indecisions,” “visions,” and “revisions” anymore. His self-consciousness is, in my opinion, his fall. Prufrock’s doubt leaves him in an idle state of wondering; instead of taking the leap, he just continues on questioning himself.Prufrock’s feelings of doubt and anxiousness are what I relate to the most. Putting myself in his shoes, I honestly would have walked the exact same path of his, in an idle state of wondering. My criticism of Prufrock’s idle state apparently applies to myself too. The first time I read “Love Song,” I could see Prufrock as the figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” However, after further reflection, I could also see myself as the same figure…