Poets are often many things. They are watchers, documenters, observers and sometimes, lovers. In their works, poets paint pictures for their readers that are sometimes clear and concise, but are often puzzling. T.S. Eliot, perhaps one of the greatest poets of the western tradition, is a puzzling author. He paints for the reader very vivid pictures using obscure language and references that the reader must dissect and meditate on for hours before coming to even a basic understanding of the work. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a milestone in Eliot's body of work. It is a rich, illustrative and demanding poem that captivates the reader within its first few lines. To fully understand the poem, one must have a firm grasp on western literature; works like The Bible, The Inferno, The Odyssey and Hamlet. Eliot uses these references to enhance the meaning of his poem and of the struggle that Prufrock endures. By looking at these references the reader can gain a whole understanding of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In this essay, we shall see that Eliot uses these references to show that Prufrock is essentially a stilted and confused character who is overcome by his own insecurities and self-centeredness. The reader will see how Eliot expresses, through Prufrock, his own insecurities as a poet.
             To understand The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, one must begin at the beginning. The title of the poem implies, of course, a love song. However, the reader sees right away that there is much more to this poem, and perhaps also the title, that meets the eye. As Kenner puts it "It was surgical economy that used the marvelous name only once, in the title, and compounded it with a fatuous "J. Alfred". It was a talent already finely schooled with nice audacity weighed in a single phrase the implications of this name against those of "Love Song" (Kenner pg. 4). So, one must decide fo...