A commentary of T.S. Elliots “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock”

In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Elliot continually writes in the voice of Prufrock, and Prufrock struggles to answer his life’s “overwhelming question.” (10) With what is J. Alfred Prufrock is so desperately struggling? He tussles with his intrapersonal paralysis to pursue women while making attempts to stave off aging. This indecisiveness creates a very bleak and semi-morbid image throughout the poem. Eliot’s beginning and ending to this poem very strongly convey Prufrock’s internal battle. Aging and the absence of women in his life seem to be the cause of Prufrock’s is morbidity and distress; however, through this his poem we see that Prufrock is a man who has passion and creativity, and is becomes more clear that Prufrocks hell is that he has nobody with whom he can share passion or love. His paper has become his passion and his lover.

The epigraph of the poem is a passage from Dante Aligheri’s Divine Comedy, more specifically the Inferno. The Inferno is Dante’s journey through the rings of Hell in his search for enlightenment. Eliot uses this theme to support

The first ten lines of the poem are the beginning of his austere descent to discover his inability to “eat a peach” (Eliot 124) with a peach being a traditional metaphor for a woman’s genitalia. Eliot uses the metaphor of “a patient etherized” (3) to Prufrock’s incapacity to engage the women who he looks upon, as a cat outside a window, throughout the poem. Prufrock appears to be lonely, so Eliot gives him the companion of the unknown listener (the reader) to escort him in his downward spiral. Prufrock’s emptiness is conveyed “through half-deserted streets,” (Eliot 4) “muttering retreats,” (Eliot 5) “one-night cheap hotels” (Eliot 6) which leads the reader to wonder what it is that has made his world so bleak. The reader gets the feeling that Prufrock is untrusting of the world, as though he is being swindled into trying to find the answer to his “overwhelming question.” (Eliot 10) “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe? (Eliot 45, 46) Prufrock does not trust himself enough to venture to be with a woman because of the probability that it will sway his universe.

Someone who has the ability to write and create art has a sense of passion, and they can see the beauty of things in a somewhat more astute way then most others. These people can not lead a life witho

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