In the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot offers a c
In the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot offers a critical and pessimistic vision of the modern spiritual condition T.S. Eliot's poem, ironically titled a "love song", is carefully constructed in a series of fragments; the consequent tonal and structural discontinuity, as well as abruptly shifting images and focus, dramatises a scattered life and a fragmented human psyche. The poem details a moral and spiritual journey, a descent suffered by T.S. Eliot's dramatic persona, the narrator and protagonist, Prufrock. The descent eventually devolves into the spiritual death of Prufrock when, having glimpsed a moment of redemptive beauty, "human voices wake" him and he "drown(s)". T.S. Eliot uses Prufrock and the radical poetic methods to explore a modern condition: a sense of social and moral corruption. Prufrock's lack of connection with others, his alienation, self debasement and absence of passion prevent him from discovering the meaning of life and redeeming his inner self. T.S. Eliot plunges Prufrock into the recognition of personal inadequacy, accompanied by an unrelenting desire for significance and recognition.T.S. Eliot's use of Dante's Inferno for his intellectually erudite epigraph introduces his vision o
Prufrock longs "To say: ¥I am Lazarus, come from the dead,'" to offer humanity some lasting wisdom. Eliot dramatises and mocks Prufrock's self-consciousness and his tragic lack of self-worth. Yet Prufrock's lack of courage renders this noble quest impossible. The rolling rhythm (line 15-20) and extended image of personified "yellow smoke" suggest drained humanity and muffled consciousness, echoing Prufrock's entrapment. Prufrock's own triviality is exposed ("They will say: How his hair is growing thin") when he fearfully and obsessively dwells on critical female scrutiny ("I have known the eyes already, known them all"o / The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase") and, painfully, self-loathingly, reduces himself to an insect "pinned and wriggling on the wall". Prufrock decisively states "No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;" ironically noting his own lack of nobility, a dignity which Hamlet possesses. S Eliot's "Love Song" ends in destruction of the tune. "I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas".
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Acceptance Essays
