T S Eliot The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Prufrock is depicted as a damned person who seeks to woo a woman. The world seen in the poem through the epigraph is dull and boring. Prufrock is not hopeful that the surroundings will offer his the conditions that he wants to win the love of a woman. His inability to perceive the world as a better place is seen in the second verse where he says, “Like a sole patient etherized upon a table” (Eliot 1). The allusion to a historical prophet is evident and reinforces the theme of inadequacy with the world. He sees himself as a person who cannot achieve the goals he had visualized in the beginning. Allusion has been used to convey Prufrock as a character who does not believe in himself because of his wretched situation.
The title of the poem symbolizes the love concerns in the poem. The reader expects Prufrock to pursue his love interest after setting the environment in the first verse. However, he is portrayed as a man who cannot act on feelings because of the questionable mindset. The strong attraction of love does not grow in the process because Prufrock does not act on his infatuation with the woman. He has fears rejection, obsessions, and anxieties he has about the world. The title is anchored on the theme of love, but Prufrock does not succeed because of the people in the world who prevent him from interacting maximally. Prufrock ends up being condemned in a world of loneliness isolation.
The speaker struggles with the self-identity in the poem. Use of repetitive questions, for example, “Do I dare disturb the universe?”(Eliot 5) has been used to depict a person who is struggling with finding himself and his real identity as a man. Eliot was a modernist who was concerned with addressing issues that revolved around self-identity but within the larger universal context. Questions of finding meaning in the speaker are evident and the speaker wants the universe to walk ...Download file to see next pages Read More