It is an examination of the pitiful outcast of a modern man--overeducated, well-spoken, irrational, and emotionally awkward. Prufrock, the poem's speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to "force the moment to its crisis" by somehow fixing their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to "dare" an approach to the woman: In his mind he hears the comments others make about his superiority, and he reminds himself that "presuming" emotional interaction could be possible. The poem moves from a series of fairly definite physical settings--a cityscape (the famous "patient etherised upon a table") and several interiors (women's arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces)--to a series of hazy ocean images carrying Prufrock's emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize that maybe he is not as superior that he once thought. "Prufrock" is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the loudness of character achieved.
             In the world Prufrock describes that no sympathetic figure exists, and he must, therefore, be content with silent reflection. In its focus on character and its dramatic delicacy, "Prufrock" anticipates Eliot's later dramatic works.
             The rhyme situated in different stanzas throughout the poem is far from random. While sections of the poem may resemble free verse, in reality, "Prufrock" is a carefully structured mixture of poetic forms. One of the most prominent formal characteristics of this work is the use of theme. Prufrock's continual referal to the "women [who] come and go Talking of Michelangelo" and his constant questionings ("how should I presume?") and cynical appraisals ("That is not it, at all.") these lines help Eliot describe the consciousness of a modern, unstable individual.
             The kinds of imagery Eliot uses also suggest that something new can be made from the ruins: The series of indefinite encounters at the poem's center reiterate a...