Breslin

A detailed Summary of Breslin

In the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Eliot explores the timeless issues of love and self-awareness - popular themes in literature. However, through his use of Prufrock's profound self-consciousness he plays with the reader's expectations of a "Love Song" and takes a serious perspective on the subject of love, which many authors do, but few can create characters as deep and multi-layered as Prufrock; probably the reason that this poem still remains, arguably, Eliot's most famous. The beginning of the poem is pre-empted by an excerpt from Dante's Inferno which Eliot uses to create the poem's serious tone, but also to begin his exploration of Prufrock's self-consciousness. By inserting this quote, a parallel is created between Prufrock and the speaker, Guido da Montefeltro, who is very aware of his position in "hell" and his personal situation concerning the fate of his life. Prufrock feels much the same way, but his hell and the fate of his life are more in his own!

mind and have less to do with the people around him. The issue of his fate leads Prufrock to an "overwhelming question..."(10) which is never identified, asked, or answered in the poem. This "question" is associated somehow to his psyche, but both its amb

nt in the poem, Prufrock is beginning to feel especially detached from society and burdened by his awareness of it. He thinks "I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Eliot not only uses imagery here to create a picture of a headless crab scuttling around at the bottom of the ocean, but he uses the form of the poem itself to help emphasize his point here. The head is detached from the crab, and the lines are detached from the poem in their own stanza, much like Prufrock wishes his self-consciousness would just "detach" itself. This concept is echoed in the very next stanza when he says, "Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in/ upon a platter,"(83), an allusion to the beheading of John the Baptist by Princess Salome. These two headless images represent Prufrock's desire to be rid of his self-consciousness (obviously in his head) and possibly some suicidal tendencies which can be tied into just about all of the!

tion." The only hope that Eliot gives the reader out of this poem is the hope that we don't end up like Prufrock.

Prufrock being caught between the two classes in the very beginning of the poem, (if not by J. Alfred Prufrock's unusual pompous/working class sounding name) when he juxtaposes the images of "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells"(4-5) and the women who "come and go Talking of Michelangelo."(13-14). These two images represent two completely different ways of life. The first image is of a dingy lifestyle - living among the "half-deserted streets"(4) while the second is the lifestyle that Prufrock longs to be associated with - much like the image of Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel where God and Adam's hands are nearly touching, but not quite. While Prufrock doesn't belong to either of these two classes completely, he does have characteristics of both. He claims to be "Full of high sentence; but a bit obtuse" while "At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-"(117-118). Being the outsider that he is, Prufrock w!

relating to Prufrock's feeling of entrapment and inability to change his situation. He wishes to himself, instead, that he could be a mindless crab, scurrying around the bottom of the ocean; another example of Prufrock's impression of his position in the natural world - rarely comparing himself to real people. In fact, in his dream sequence at the end when he imagines how his life might end up, he envisions himself as an ocean creature, surrounded by mermaids "Till human voices wake us, and we drown." Once again, Eliot disconnects Prufrock from the real world. Even though Prufrock's fantasies to be a crab, swim with the mermaids, be young again like Lazarus, talk to women about Michelangelo with the poise and eloquence of Hamlet, slink around the city like a lazy yellow fog, and have his head chopped off like John the Baptist give him a detachment from his day-to-day worries about love and aging, he will never stop torturing himself

Some common words found in the essay are:
Inferno Eliot, Unfortunately Prufrock, Twelfth Night, Coy Mistress, Mother Nature, Princess Salome, Prince Hamlet, God Adam's, Ironically Prufrock, Love Song, throughout poem, beginning poem, unfortunately prufrock, fate life, doomed character prufrock, change behavior, unsuccessful attempts, prufrock echoes, poem remains, life prufrock, suggests prufrock,

Approximate Word count = 2037
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English