The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, A Critical Analysis

‘Love Song’ opens with an epigraph from Canto 27 of Dante’s Inferno, which consists of six lines in
the original Italian. The speaker of the epigraph is Guido da Montefeltro, who meets Dante in the
eighth circle of Hell. Guido assumes that Dante cannot leave Hell and return to the world, and is
therefore willing to confess his story. Guido claims that if he knew his words would be taken
outside of the inferno, he would never have spoken. This passage not only sets a confessional
tone, but also illuminates why Prufrock speaks so freely during the poem. As a character so timid
and insecure, struggling to communicate to those around him, Prufrock is remarkably expressive
to the recipient of the poem. If Prufrock is Guido, then are we Dante? Perhaps Prufrock also
believes that, like Dante, we are not capable of sharing his story and so allows us into his mind. If
Prufrock then is Guido, how did he end up in the penultimate circle of Hell?
The speaker begins by instructing, ‘let us go, you and I’ (1), establishing a dramatic monologue
between himself and an unknown recipient. Prufrock may be addressing us as readers or
addressing a companion, or he may be speaking to himself and his psyche in a constant internal
debate. Titled ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, Prufrock is potentially addressing the object
of his affection, at least in his own head. It is left ambiguous whom the speaker is addressing.
Prufrock then continues, pulling us on a trip through the city streets, through his life and his
consciousness. He begins by painting the scene of the city, with its ‘certain half-deserted streets,’
its ‘restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells’ (4-7). The
imagery evokes the seedy nightlife of a city, sleazy and unnerving, much like a Toulouse-Lautrec
painting. We have possibly been brought into the red-light district. The speaker continues to
illustrate, and personify, the ‘yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes’ (15). This
yellow fog and smoke gets into every crack and corner, and ‘lingered upon the pools that stand in
drains’ (18). This feels nearly like Hades, or at least one of its circles.
Between these images, Prufrock hints at ‘an overwhelming question’ (10) but quickly brushes the
topic away. He even cries ‘oh, do not ask, “What is it?”’ (11). Prufrock ushers us indoors soon after,
and here we begin to realize his insecurity. He feels the continuous presence of this
‘overwhelming question’, but is consumed by fear and insecurity and cannot face it. He convinces
himself that ‘there will be time’ (37), and he plans to ‘turn back and descend the stair’ (39). Again
and again, Prufrock attempts to ask this ‘overwhelming question’ but then withdraws or fills the
space with superfluous questions. ‘Shall I part my hair behind? Do I Dare to eat a peach?’ (122),
are senseless in contrast to the greater question he continues to avoid. Insecurity is Prufrock’s
central problem, as he is constantly in fear of being judged, unworthy, and rejected. He is
concerned that if he poses this question to a woman she will refuse him, claiming he has
misinterpreted her advances: ‘that is not what I meant at all; that is not it, at all.” (97-8)
The conflict running through the entire poem is that of Prufrock and his question that he never
asks, and through this conflict the speaker reveals various modernist themes that he struggles
with such as boredom, fear, ennui, and frustration. This, in turn, opens up another circle of
Hades; the psyche. Prufrock is trapped in the turmoil of his consciousness. He experiences ennui,
boredom with his life, and is living from one cup of coffee to the next, ‘measuring(ing) out my life
with coffee spoons’ (51). The speaker fills his life with frivolous eating, ‘the cups, the marmalade,
the tea’ (88), the ‘tea and cakes and ices’ (79). His reality is made of material objects that he clings
to. Prufrock is a man constantly running back up the stairs, second-guessing, and obsessing about
his reputation.
The language of the text evokes disorder and aimlessness: restless nights, one-night cheap hotels,
visions and revisions. A scene unfolds and then cuts sharply to a new one, non-linear, some
scenes are splintered and then repeat. For example, ‘in the room the women come and go, talking
of Michelangelo’ recurs twice, with little relation to the preceding stanzas. Even the woman with
whom Prufrock imagines conversing with is never fully there except in fragments; the ‘eyes’, the
‘arms’, and the ‘perfume from a dress’ (65). The final image of the poem, of mermaids in the sea, is
ambiguous and surreal, adding a dream-like quality. In fact, the entire poem feels like a
disturbing dream. The poem consists mostly of hypothetical encounters and Prufrock’s internal
musings, and therefore this disturbing dream is the speaker’s psyche.
In the end, nothing is accomplished in “Love Song”. We never learn the ‘overwhelming question’,
the speaker never asks it. J. Alfred Prufrock, Eliot’s modern man, drowns in his unyielding
struggle between egos. His weaknesses derive from two layers of Inferno, that of his character and
that of the decaying world around him. “Love Song” is a portrait of human nature in modern
society.

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‘Love Song’ opens with an epigraph from Canto 27 of Dante’s Inferno, which consists of six lines in

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