Great Works II

1) Long Island City

“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky….of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” (lines 1-7)

My journey with Alfred Prufrock starts in long Island City along the boardwalk where old cheap morals used to be. The are now is deserted with soon to be construction projects planned out to rebuild this area. There are a few seafood restaurants that offer oysters along the water.

2) Queensborough Bridge

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes” (line 15)

“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” (lines 31-33)

A walk across the Queensborough bridge during a foggy day makes a person think, question their humanity and legacy. During this walk, its as if time has frozen and the only sounds are your thoughts.

3) Park Ave/Midtown

“To wonder, ‘Do I Dare? and Do I Dare? ‘Time to turn back and descend the stair with a bald spot in the middle of my hair….’But how his arms and legs are thin! ‘Do I dare Disturb the universe?” (lines 37-45).

This is the area where plenty of wall street and rich people live. Every day many of them, stressed, walk to walk endlessly forget about how time passes so fast. They forget about time to a point that they only realize that most of their life has passed after they see how old they have gotten. They are most concerned with making money and leaving a legacy -“Do I dare disturb the universe?”

4) Southwestern corner of Central Park

“Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watch the smoke that rise from the pipes of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? “ (Lines 70-72)

West side of central park are old small houses made of old brick stone, where people are seen smoking out of in the evenings. Old couples, and other strangers tend to sit and ponder about life on the benches of the southwest entrance of Central Park. The evenings there are quiet and “sleep so peacefully”.

5) Riverside Park

“I have seen them riding seaward on the waves combing thw hite hair of the waves blown back ……By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us, and we drown” (Lines 126-132)

Our final stop is riverside park, where the waves constantly hit the side create a symphony of its own. Looking into the water, Prufrock has his final thoughts on what is the meaning of his life and what it means to be human. The sea may call out to him but it is the human voices that keep him at land and “drown” him back to the city, the society and back to the system.