Alfie

here's an essay i wrote on "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" in prep for the darned isc board exams. i did half the syllabus well and neglected the other half... a nice gamble if u feel you're attuned with luck or existence or 'the experience'... i got all the poems and stories i'd studied for, however since i always had this habit of leaving aside the paneer pieces for the end of the meal i left prufy for the last as well cos i seemed to have spent enough time on it and enjoyed writing about it like i pigged on the cottage cheese... and as it turned out i lost too much time on the roti and daal and the restless bitch of a waiter took my plate and paper before i could write more than one paragraph of my essay or dif my fork into the juicy paneer. thus i now burden .... ??? .... with my full essay. we had only a half of the poem to study for. the brilliant bits about the scuttling crab and the eternal flunky and the mermaid were not prescribed.... so i didnt consider any of that in the following essay. the following is only reflective of the pressure my then english teacher, good ol sumithra akka, and everyone in general put me through to write atleast one god forsaken essay... so if you cant make yourself go through it make sure you've atleast read the poem.... its a real brilliant poem

“The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” is T.S. Eliot’s exploration of love and life as experienced in the complex modern age of man where, all around, the ‘whole’ seems reduced to a few seemingly personified parts. Everything in the world portrayed in “The Love Song” breaks composite realities down to meaningless and disembodied bits; swallowing the whole, and reducing it to powerlessness. The poet presents such a world as seen through the mind of an individual who is disillusioned due to a lack of self-worth.
The protagonist, Prufrock, is a troubled, middle-aged man from a middle-class background. He depicts traits of being clever, self-important, insecure, nervous, out of reach of the cultured world--- yet feeling its demanding pressures, judging of others, and driven by a vivid imagination that magnifies his situation to greater degrees than he can cope with. Prufrock is troubled, because he feels that the people around him are sizing him up in the same way that he has sized-up the world around him, and feels threatened. The tragedy in the poem seems to be that his notion of being judged is born out of Prufrock giving himself more importance than the people around him do. In other words, it is he himself who is judging everything----including himself---rather than the people around, on whom he projects his own habit.
Prufrock is in love with a lady, but is unable to articulate his feelings even in his own mind. His thoughts fluctuate around his proposal of love to the lady in question, and these anxious mental vacillations spread to everything he sees, constructing in everything a formulated finiteness. He projects this process of de-valuation onto others, making him feel brutally analysed. He eventually loses touch with reality and the totality of the universe, and his fear of others makes him withdrawn. He thus fears that all that is visible in him are his inadequacies, and gets stuck with possibilities of rejection. Attempting to cushion himself from the difficulty of any confrontation with reality, he evolves a stagnant mask-universe around himself, where the real remains ignored; where a sullen stillness and timelessness numb him into inaction. He wonders, do I dare disturb this universe?
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;”
Eliot thus begins the poem, by setting through its first line the tone of a dramatic monologue, acknowledging only the main character who narrates his story, and the reader who listens---dissolving the poet himself; and creating a negative atmosphere.
The reader is invited by Prufrock to the walk that he takes to the house of his lover, to whom he wishes to propose a relationship. He creates the dreary atmosphere of an evening that motionlessly lingers, as though ‘etherised’, over-shadowing the larger picture which is symbolised by the sky. He seems almost trapped in the moment, and himself, unable to connect with any larger reality. The comparison between the “evening… spread out against the sky”, and a “patient etherised upon a table”, discusses the contrast between the present and the continuous: the evening and the patient signify the momentary aspect of time, while the sky and the table signify an ever-present and perpetual quality. The idea of the vastness of time as an all-encompassing entity, in the presence of the limited present, and the use of “etherised” builds up an atmosphere of weariness.
Prufrock draws out the walk through “half-deserted streets…. that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent”. He describes the streets as being neither occupied nor deserted; neither full of sounds, nor silent. But they are “half-deserted.. muttering retreats”, incomplete, and adding to the deranged quality of the moment. He introduces the first tangible idea of his conflict through the description of “one-night cheap hotels and.. restaurants with oyster-shells”. One side of the conflict is the self-consciousness and unease that he has to go through when he is in such situations as staying a night in a cheap hotel. These present situations that question his self-worth due to a deviation from the ideal path, that Prufrock perceives society directing him to. The other side is that of high values and quality of life, such as restaurants with oyster-shells, which are the highest ideals of society. Prufrock sees through these high values by characterising them with sawdust, implying that, like a stuffed toy, these values have no reality. However, he still confesses being helplessly pulled by this kind of a path. In fact, his continuous emphasis on this kind of a life only exposes his consciousness of it. Prufrock’s allusion of the street seeming like a “tedious argument …of insidious intent” is probably a mark of his diffidence, of the disagreements between partners.
The street, the conflict, and the argument finally lead to an overwhelming question. Prufrock evades the question. It could be the question of proposal, that of human dignity, or something larger, but Prufrock delays it and takes us elsewhere.
“In the room the women come and go-
Talking of Michelangelo.”
Shifting tense and creating a frozen reality, Prufrock introduces the jury to his existence. These cultivated women, who form the cream of society, are those present at the house of his lover. They are represented as hollow, pretentious, and irrelevant, yet highly affecting him, just like the ideals of society. They talk of such pre-planned and meaningless subjects that only the ‘cultured’ talk about, while putting down all those, such as Prufrock, who come from outside their circle. Coming from the same background as his lover, these women strengthen Prufrock’s insecurities by seeming to aggravate his need for the qualities that he sees as being expected of him. The role that these women play is parallel to what a part of Prufrock’s own mind is dictating to him. It is essentially he himself who is trying to attain class and culture.
Outside the house, Prufrock’s mind suddenly slips to objects of lesser importance. The subjective way in which they are perceived, however, only adds more strength to the atmosphere of the poem. He observes the fog hanging in the air and imagines it as though it were characterized with all the mannerisms of a cat: “Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening…made a sudden leap”. The fog resembles Prufrock himself, reflecting his isolation and his tendency to evade. It moves through the night; licks its tongue into the corners of the dirty streets; lingers upon pools, letting soot fall on its back; slips by the terrace, making a sudden leap. Finally, seeing that it is a “soft October night”, the fog curls once about the house and falls asleep. The fog touches everything, but feeling that it is the wrong time, covers up and falls asleep. Furthermore, the description of the fog as yellow denotes disease and a sense of constraint or paralysis.
In the next stanza, a completely new complexity arises in the poem: the question of whether Prufrock actually leaves for the house of the lady at all; whether he even physically travels anywhere. This new development is a result of a sudden tone of procrastination in Prufrock’s conversation that tends to place him in a time prior to the undertaking of any action, from where he is possibly still planning and imagining the visit:
“And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke…;
… time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
.. time yet for a hundred indecisions;
and for a hundred visions and revisions,
before the taking of toast and tea.”
Prufrock puts off having to confront the lover with his proposal till another time. The uncertainty of how the future might turn out and the risk of rejection bears down on him, immobilizing and softening him. He rationalizes his lethargy and fear by thinking that there will be another time, and more time. Time in which he can recreate and better himself, and make a face to meet the faces. Time in which he can prepare and orchestrate himself better. There is also a doubt created in the reader of who the poem is being narrated to, in the line “a time for you and a time for me..”. Could it be to another part of Prufrock’s mind? However, it is most likely that Eliot is only trying to incorporate the reader’s world into that of Prufrock’s.
Prufrock comforts himself in the face of fear by telling himself that he has all the time in the world. But sadly, the taking of the toast and tea may never happen; his song of love may never be sung. Prufrock, who has set himself in a pattern of evasion and hesitation, is perched on the idea that there will be time “to turn back and descend the stair”. Prufrock’s fear stems a lot from thinking about the pain and insult of being judged by the people of the house. He fears they will comment on his baldness, his frail body, and other such ‘weaknesses’ that he is so insecure about. He may present himself to them finely: “my morning coat mounting firmly to the chin, my necktie rich and modest”; but the people whom he fears will pick even a small and simple pin and set him against it. It is more Prufrock himself, however, who picks his weaknesses, so to speak, than the people around him, for in fact, he may not matter to them at all. He asks aloud, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” The universe where he need not face his fears; where he need not see the truth that it is, after all, only he himself who is putting forward demands. He is a prey of society, for he feels there is one.
Prufrock seems to wish that he were a part of his lover’s world---the society---but it is beyond him, and thus he negates it altogether. He insists that that he is familiar with all aspects of that world---“For I have known them already, known them all”--–and claims to have reached the premise of being able to dismiss it altogether. He imagines himself having measured out his life “with coffee spoons”. This exaggerated and illogical statement expresses Prufrock’s desperation to be in control of his life, an entity too large and puzzling for him to even comprehend. He is covering for his incapability to enter her world, as he picks out various images from it, and speaks of them as though he were beyond them:
“I have known the voices dying with a dying fall…
and the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase….
and the arms that are braceleted and bare (but in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)”

All Prufrock pictures of her world are incomplete bits of images---arms, eyes, voices, music, etc. This alone goes to show that he is indeed totally unfamiliar with it. Thus, the sole reason why Prufrock even needs to bring up the question, “so how should I presume?”, is because he is unable to accept who he really is. A strong conflict arises between his image of himself as knowing all---which he unfalteringly clings to---and his true self. He lowers his own value and is unable to see his own world as being compatible to the world of his lover. He sees everyone’s life as being surrounded by indestructible fences that often do not merge or open. Prufrock ostracizes himself and is unable to even begin a reformation, for he doubts the result of disturbing the universe. He intensely desires to open up to the lady: “spit out the butt-ends of my days and ways”, but he plainly cannot picture how to begin, or how to go about doing it.
Eliot has said that the most interesting verse is that which constantly approaches a fixed pattern without quite settling into it: ’It is this contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the very life of verse’. This contrast is presented in the careful construction of many of the lines, and is also a part of Prufrock’s psychological tendencies: the lines advance into a pattern as Prufrock’s own thoughts are creating an idea, but as soon as he is almost reaching a solid statement, the line and rhythm falters, and Prufrock shrinks away.
Throughout the poem, Prufrock is vague about his intentions, but he uses distinct images to communicate to the reader an extremely honest and unrestrained representation of his most intense thoughts. Prufrock’s irony suggests a general human condition besides being directed at himself---his fear of ordinary living is measured by his own standards.
-10.10.2004