t.s. eliot's j. alfred prufroc

In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” he continually writes of Prufrock’s struggle 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 this, Prufrock’s internal battle.

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 Prufrock’s feelings that he is stuck in

his own personal hell. Another similarity between the two works is the descending theme. In the Inferno, Dante travels further and further down through the rings of hell on his way up to the heavens. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot starts his description at the skyline slowly works his down to a finale in the sea.

Eliot brings the poem back to the epigraph in the ending lines of the poem as Prufrock seemingly falls into the eternal hell of his indecisiveness. Prufrock once again is left standing outside of the circle of mermaids, as they do not sing to him. (Eliot 124, 125) Eliot uses the black and white imagery to display Prufrock’s aging, while the mermaids (which perhaps is a reference to the Sirens) remain colorful and youthful. The way that Eliot writes of “the chambers of the sea” (129) seems

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