The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Eliot opens the poem with an epigraph from Dante’s Inferno. In referencing Guido da Montefeltro, who tells a story only because he believes no one will be able to repeat it, Eliot establishes the interiority of the monologue his speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock, is about to deliver. This creates intimacy with the reader and establishes a degree of honesty. The reader can trust the speaker.

Eliot immediately creates an eerie, unsettled mood with the first stanza’s imagery, describing the evening as “spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table” (Lines 2-3). With this startling, medical image, he introduces a key theme: the paralysis or inaction of modern man. A degree of risk undergirds the image, suggesting that death pervades the speaker’s mindset and worldview.

Prufrock addresses a second person “you” in these early lines. Multiple interpretations of the “you” figure are possible: Perhaps Prufrock speaks to the reader, drawing them in for an intimate look into his mind; perhaps he speaks to the female love interest who arrives later in the poem; or perhaps he addresses an alternate side of his own, fragmented self. All three are valid interpretations, and it is possible to shift between these three lenses throughout the reading of the poem. This possibility of multiple interpretations creates an unmoored feeling, in which the reader experiences something akin to the organic movements of Prufrock’s thought patterns, shifting between different images and conversations, while ever returning to his rumination on his failure to live a meaningful life.

The images in the first stanza establish the poem’s mood, as Prufrock observes “one-night cheap hotels / and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” (Lines 6-7). The streets are “half-deserted” (Line 4) and lonely, suggesting an alienation from other humans. Prufrock feels deserted in his life, and while he attempts to go out into the world in search of answers and companionship, he encounters “streets that follow like a tedious argument / of insidious intent” (Lines 8-9). The modern world offers no answer, support, or consolation to Prufrock; the streets generate negativity and lead nowhere. The stanza builds to the suggestion of the “overwhelming question” that Prufrock wants to pose but is incapable of articulating for his reader at this moment—perhaps due to his fear of an answer, or lack of a meaningful answer. The allusion to the “overwhelming question” creates tension, propelling the reader further into the poem in the hopes of learning what is at stake with this question.

Eliot cuts to a couplet he repeats again later in the poem: “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” (Lines 13-14). Interspersing this singsong couplet with the internal anxiety of Prufrock’s mind, Eliot emphasizes the gulf Prufrock feels between himself and other humans—particularly women. Their conversation represents a kind of banal frivolity, or an elite class trying to be fashionable or smart in their conversations. Prufrock observes the kind of superficial ease they have, which is something that escapes him.

The insidious tone soon makes its way back into the poem with a cat-like yellow fog pervading Prufrock’s world. The repetition of key images (the window panes, the yellow smoke) emphasizes Prufrock’s anxiety as he processes the scene. The yellow fog is suffocating, paralyzing, and it haunts him, casting an unsettling, damaging light over his world.

In stanza four, Prufrock repeats the phrase (or an iteration of the phrase) “there will be time” multiple times as he tries to reassure or convince himself that he will be able to find meaning in his life. He worries about interactions with others, and how he can “prepare a face to see the faces that you meet” (Line 27). Prufrock anxiously lists all of the things that require time:

Time to murder and create, / and time for all the words and days of hands/that lift and drop a question on your plate;/Time for you and time for me,/and time yet for a hundred indecisions,/and for a hundred visions and revisions. (Lines 28-33)

While his list is anxiety-riddled and propulsive, it is also vague and overwhelming, suggesting that it is not actually a list of achievable items. As in other parts of the poem, an undercurrent of violence informs his list, but at the root of the list, his base desire is simple and meaningful: He wants time “for you and me” (Line 31), or the possibility of forming a connection with someone.

In this sixth stanza, Prufrock describes his physical body: He is a balding, thin, middle-aged everyman, and is deeply concerned with how others perceive him. He imagines voices of other judgmental humans who will comment on his bald spot and his thin limbs. He poses another weighty question: “Do I dare?” which morphs into “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” (Lines 45-46). Prufrock craves something big, momentous, and heroic—something that will force his society to see him differently, but the stanza fizzles out as he acknowledges “in a minute there is time / for decisions and revisions with a minute will reverse” (Lines 47-48). Once again, Prufrock devolves into rumination and inaction, fixating on the back-and-forth “decisions and revisions” (Linen48) rather than any meaningful action. He remains incapable of doing anything that would “[d]isturb the universe” (Line 46) and allow others to differently view him.

Prufrock describes his life as “measured out in coffee spoons” (Line 51), emphasizing the banality, repetition, and uneventfulness of his life thus far. He once again situates himself apart from humanity and action when he describes dying voices “beneath the music from a farther room,” and asks, “[s]o how should I presume?” (Lines 53-54). His distance and alienation from others makes his inability to act more acute; he has no example to follow, no one to confide in or trust, and therefore cannot presume anything about how to act. He feels victimized by others, sensing that they constantly watch and judge him, “fix[ing him] in a formulated phrase” until his is “sprawling on a pin […] wriggling on the wall” (Lines 56-58). The weight of people's eyes prevents him from clearly and decisively thinking, taking control of his life, and seeking meaning. Metaphorically pinned on the wall like an insect, Prufrock asks how he could even be capable of change: “Then how should I begin / To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?” (Line 59-60) He is desperate to move beyond the life measured by coffee spoons but paralyzed with fear of how the world around him might perceive him.

Eliot more explicitly introduces Prufrock’s sexual frustration in the following stanza, as he imagines a female figure in sexualized terms, and fails in his attempts to communicate with her. When faced with the prospect of a sexual encounter, he only has questions: “And should I then presume? / And how should I begin?” (Lines 68-69) The woman is not even a complete human to Prufrock. He imagines her only in body and clothing parts, describing her arm, her dress, her shawl; as such, he cannot even begin to engage her in intimate conversation, let alone sex.

Prufrock tries to imagine what he might say in an effort to form a connection, but his mind wanders back to the isolated images of the beginning of the poem, with dark streets full of smoke and lonely men (Lines 70-72). With a tone of angry depression, he concedes that he should have been “a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (Lines 73-74). For a despairing Prufrock, it would have been more sensical to live a non-human life, apart from the human interaction he is incapable of generating but so desperately seeks.

The next two stanzas continue to highlight Prufrock’s anxieties and fears, relying on Biblical allusions to emphasize his pitifulness. After once more describing the tea, cakes, and ices representing the superficial interactions in his everyday life, he asks himself if he has “the strength to force the moment to its crisis?” (Line 80) This movement from the insignificant to the significant is common throughout the poem, as Prufrock’s see-sawing mind tries to approach something meaningful before receding once again. He self-deprecatingly compares himself to John the Baptist, noting that while he is “no prophet” (Line 82), he has seen his bald head “brought in upon a platter” (Line 83), and has seen “the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker” (Line 85). Prufrock wishes for the courage of a martyr, but can only see himself as the ridiculous fool who has “seen the moment of [his] greatness flicker” (Line 84). Even Death, or the “eternal Footman” (Line 85), holds no respect for Prufrock, and his preoccupation with how others see him promotes fear and inaction.

Prufrock’s tone becomes more desperate, as he asks, “[a]nd would it have been worth it, after all […] to roll it towards some overwhelming question” (Lines 85-93), as he describes an attempt to communicate with the female love interest again. Prufrock builds up to the question once more, hoping to address it with the woman and thus form a connection with her. He imagines telling a story through the lens of Lazarus, a Biblical figure resurrected from the dead in the New Testament’s Book of John. Prufrock wants the sensation of rebirth and resurrection that he associates with this Biblical story. He craves transformation, and wants to communicate this with the woman, but the stanza ends in deflation when she replies, “[t]hat is not what I meant at all” (Line 97), telling Prufrock he has failed to understand anything about her. With this sense of deflation Prufrock becomes more frustrated and despairing. He tries again to get at a sense of romanticism and connection, drawing on images of sunsets and novels, teacups and skirts, only to land on the realization that “[i]t is impossible to say just what I mean!” (Line 104) For the second time, the woman speaks to repeat that Prufrock has misunderstood her: “That is not what I meant, at all” (Line 110). Prufrock’s attempts at love result in an utter lack of knowledge of the other, forcing him to reckon with whether or not love is even worth it if he is incapable of understanding or communicating with the other party.

In the final stanzas of the poem, Prufrock refers to Shakespeare’s Hamlet; the titular character is widely acknowledged as indecisive. It seems a natural connection: two men who cannot act and suffer accordingly, but Prufrock claims to be lowlier than Prince Hamlet, nothing more than the “Fool” (Line 119). He feels himself aging, and begins to fret again about superficial triteness

 like how he should wear his hair. The earlier, enormous question he posed— “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” (Lines 45-46)—peters out into the meaningless, ridiculous “Do I dare to eat a peach?” (Line 122), emphasizing the extent of his paralysis; he can no longer consider and make even the simplest of decisions.

Prufrock walks on an unnamed beach, listening to mermaids singing, although he does not believe they will sing for him (Line 125). He details how they move across the ocean waves, creating a mystical, other-worldly setting in stark contrast to the grimy, urban scenes from earlier stanzas. There, he says, “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / till human voices wake us, and we drown” (Lines 129-31). Eliot gives the reader a moment of quiet respite and beauty, setting up the contrast with the final line of the poem, in which the human voice enters once again, and Prufrock escapes, finally, via death.