J. Alfred Pruflock
The character of J. Alfred Pruflock is a withdrawn, middle-aged man who is perhaps going through a mid-life crisis and is examining the mistakes he has made in his life. He is a lover, but at the same time, he is afraid of declaring his love to someone. He is also very worried about many attributes of himself including his aging appearance and what other people think about his appearance. There is an example of this in line 40-41 when he says, “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)”. There is in addition, another example in which he imagines the grim reaper laughing at his bald spot and how horrifying that would be. He also attempts to make himself young again by rolling his trousers and wearing a hair style that young people wore at that time, but he realizes it was of no use because he is growing old and there is no changing it. He watches the beautiful young women at the party and he imagines himself attempting to converse and tell a particular woman of his love for her. In his dream, he tells his love how he feels and for some reason, she is incapable of understanding what he is saying. Prufrock also starts to rehearse a speech he will
The modernism that Eliot wrote with is easily seen in this poem. First of all, the character himself is modernistic because he shows the frustration with time, age, and love that a more modern society possesses. Secondly, his constant struggle with wanting to fit in is an evident example of a more modern society. Thirdly, Eliot goes into the mind of the character himself and the audience is allowed to see how the character feels from inside his mind instead of us just being told how the character feels. By doing this, the readers are more interested because we are actually allowed to determine what we think about the character instead of the poet directly pointing it out. Also, the use of paralysis in the poem is very interesting. We see the character moving around to different places, but it was all inside of the Prufrock’s mind. Another example of modernism is how he jumps from place to place without congruity. We see Prufrock move from streets to women talking to images of women and then to mermaids. Eliot also uses a different rhyme scheme in this poem. He does not use the traditional blank verse, but a tightly metrical blank verse with the five-stress lines frequently b
Some topics in this essay:
Alfred Pruflock,
Thirdly Eliot,
poem character,
character feels,
alfred pruflock,
modern society,
character poem,
blank verse,
bald spot,
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Approximate Word count = 805
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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