T. S. Eliot, a notable twentieth century poet, wrote often about the modern man and his incapacity to make decisive movements. In his work entitled, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’; he continues this theme allowing the reader to view the world as he sees it, a world of isolation and fear strangling the will of the modern man. The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante’s Inferno, an allusion to Dante’s character who speaks from Hell only because he believes that the listener can not return to earth and thereby is impotent to act on the knowledge of his conversation.
In his work, Eliot uses this quotation to foreshadow the idea that his character, Prufrock, is also trapped in a world he can not escape, the world where his own thoughts and feelings incapacitate and isolate him. Eliot paints a picture of the opening scene that depicts a drab neighborhood of cheap hotels and restaurants where Prufrock lives in his solitary gloom. He invites the reader to make a visit with him to a place that Prufrock imagines is filled with women having tea and engaging in conversation.
Prufrock procrastinates on the visit and says, ‘There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet:’; (lines 26-27) indicating to the reader that he is afraid of showing his real self to these participants. He further indicates his hesitation by stating, ‘Time for you and time for me. / And time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea’; (lines 31-34).
He is clearly incapacitated to act, trapped by his own fear that he will be unable to garner any interaction from the women with whom he wants to converse. Prufrock plans his approach and reminds himself often that; ‘there will be time. ‘; ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’; (line 51), shows how Prufrock thinks of his own life, unexciting and unheroic. In his mind he has nothing to offer these women. He returns to wrestling with his thoughts that allow him to desire the love the women have to offer but talk himself out of the task by gentile reminders of the risk.
He tells the reader that he knows these women and even begins to rehearse an opening remark, ‘Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets / And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes’; (lines 70-71). This thought is quickly lost however as Prufrock imagines how easy it would be to be a creature that had no need for love, ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas’; (lines 73-74). Having decided not to try, Prufrock questions whether his efforts would have been worthwhile.
He believes that he can not relate to the women that which he feels, ‘It is impossible to say just what I mean! ‘; (line 104). He rationalizes his fear by imagining that his speaking to the women would not have achieved any real response. He further imagines the women saying, ‘That is not what I meant at all, / That is not it, at all’; (lines 97-98), allowing his mind to interject the reactions from these ladies without the risk in actually having the conversation take place.
These internal conversations that Prufrock engages in keeps him inactive and uninvolved. Prufrock contrasts himself to Hamlet, a hero who hesitated but finally acted decisively, but clearly tells the reader that he is more like the fool, ‘Politic, cautious, and meticulous’; (line 116). He resigns himself to the fact that he will age into a solitary existence. He has abandoned dreams of romance and has allowed himself the safe life of a passionless old man.
T. S. Eliot’s character, Prufrock, epitomizes what he must have thought of the modern urban man. This character longs for love and relationships but is unable to break away from his solitary life due to his own fears of rejection. He fights with himself, battling with the inner voice that keeps him from reaching out to perhaps ask for the love he seeks. Eliot’s characterization allows the reader to view Prufrock as the man that society of modern life has molded. Prufock is the embodiment of the frustration and disillusionment that T. S. Eliot envisioned.
