The speakers of the poems " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "After Apple-Picking" have many things in common. One of their similarities is that while they start doing different things, they come to the common conclusion that all their efforts were futile. Additionally, they have many things that are different from one and other. One of the differences is indecisiveness, while Prufrock is very indecisive, the speaker in "After Apple-Picking" decides what he should do and goes after this goal.

In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" the speaker is very indecisive. This is evident from the fact hat he says, "time yet for a hundred indecisions". (Line 32) His whole life he is indecisive whether he should propose to his lover or lovers, which he calls "they". He weighs up the pros and cons of proposing, and what the action would lead him to do in the future. He is scared that "they" might say his "hair is thin" (Line 41), or his "arms and legs are thin". (Line 44) He continues to be against proposing, when he says,

From both poems, one can draw similar conclusions. In "After Apple-Picking" the speaker at first goes after his goals completely, as if he is a workaholic. He says this in a round about way, "there's a barrel I didn't fill", (Line 4) from which we can infer that he did fill the rest of the barrels. However, at the end he gets sick of picking apples, the thing he had earlier wanted to do. We can see that if one only does what their desires tell them, in the end he will fail. A person must balance out what he is doing, so he will not only do one thing. In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" because Prufrock never went after his goal of proposing to his lover, he remained in his original position, a bachelor without a lover, forever. In conclusion, I think we can learn from the speakers of the two poems that one shouldn't be an extremist. On one hand, one should listen to their desires, however, on the other hand, one should do other activities besides for ones' desires. We learn from the mixture between the two speakers' extremes how important it is to balance ones' life with different ac

Some common words found in the essay are:
Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock Prufrock, Prufrock Apple-Picking, song alfred prufrock, Love Song, Song Alfred, song alfred, love song alfred, love song, alfred prufrock, heap worth, apple-picking speaker, thin line, speakers poems, alfred prufrock apple-picking, prufrock apple-picking, listening desires, planting harvesting,
Approximate Word count = 737
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)