Alfred J Prufrock example essay topic

Analysis Of The Poem "Alfred J. Prufrock " Analysis Of The Poem "Alfred J. Prufrock' T.S. Eliot's poem ' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' has a lot to do with his life passing him by. He knows he is trapped in his own patterns of behavior and can't get away from them. He is tired of the facades of the people around him but can't escape his own facade himself He comes to realize, that he's been living in a fake reality as the "human voices wake us, and we drown. ' Eliot reflects Prufrock as he knows that he has to ' prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.. ' the facade that everyone wears, a prerequisite is the artificial society he lives in. thus, it was not the time to do what he has to do, that is, write the love song. Prufrock is extremely self-conscious, he focuses on his bald spot, the thinness of his arms and legs which shows how disconnected and frustrated he is within himself. Prufrock's "love song' is full of false starts, repetitions and regressions, which further illustrate his indecisiveness and his desire to escape from this "universe' that he dares not disturb.

His universe, or world where everything has its set place and it will be disastrous for him to disturb its equilibrium. The yellow fog-cat imagery signifies both his escape from the ' women' and the superficiality or fake ness of the women, as seen in the use of the word ' yellow' an entirely unnatural colour for a natural fog. just as the eyes fix him so too does the society trap him in a set mode like a pinned insect for observation. He wants to be the crab at the bottom of the sea which is another form of escape. something that exempts him expressing his emotions for others to see, criticize or even scorn him in an attempt to put him in his "correct place' or "formulated phrase'. ' Prufrock' alludes to the Ecclesiastes in the Bible when he speaks about a time for everything ' there will be time to murder and create.. ' em phasing that there is a time for everything and this is not the time for him to do something as assertive as declaring his love openly.

By "murder and create,' Eliot does not mean death and life, but rather something else that can be "murdered and created. ' That something else are "thoughts and ideas. ' They too, are things that can be pondered and thrown away. "Do I dare?' part becomes logical when you think of an old, shriveled, bald man wondering if he should "dare' pursue a relationship. He is self-conscious and therefore, he is unsure whether or not he should go for her. His "time to turn back and descend the stair' is over, because he cannot be young again.

Prufrock is having an inferiority complex, stating that he will never be a main character, like Hamlet, but rather an "attendant lord' (in this case like Horatio) who is only there to slightly move the plot of the main character. This allusion to Hamlet shows that Prufrock is not one of royalty, but he's still dependable, reliable, and good. Prufrock is a minor character in the world, but he's a real person. At the end of the stanza, the word "Fool' is capitalized because it is another Shakespearean allusion. "Fool' was a clown in one of his plays.

The poem goes on to describe how he rolled his trousers, meaning that he is shrinking. He covers his bald spot, he eats a peach (which could mean that it is soft and easy for him to eat) and he walks by himself on the beach. Prufrock is lonely. The mermaids (which are a mythological allusion to the Sirens) will not sing to him and he is too scared to say anything but wonders if people would have understood him, he would not need to say "no that is not what i meant, not what I meant at all' Prufrock measures his life in "coffee spoons'. By this he means that it is a routine thing that Prufrock does every day. It basically shows the futility of Prufrock's life.

He lives a completely boring life. this painfully shy, indecisive man sets out to write a love song but instead, writes something which is totally different from the conventional love song. A weak, ineffectual attempt, nothing as creative as Michelangelo's work, or well-known, but something just as unconventional in it's own time. But One should never a sume any of Eliot's works to be completly strait forward and simple. While it is true that the poem can be understood at many different levels a complete assesment can only be rendered by looking at the plentiful and obscureaullusions in it.