Prufrock's Disgust

A detailed Summary of Prufrock's Disgust

Questa fiama staria senza piu scosse.

Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,

Not only does the paragraph listed above appear in Dante's Inferno but also in T.S. Elliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Translated from Italian the snippet means, "If I even thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy." With that excerpt in mind we entered the world of J. Alfred Prufrock. Filled with the shallow emptiness, J. Alfred Prufrock's life is wearily lived. From his experience with the "...women...talking of Michelangelo" he gained nothing (2042). However, the reader regarding comprehension of his experience obtains much.

Prufrock starts the story by taking us to a place of "...restless nights in one-night cheap hotels...sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells...and... streets that follow like a tedious argument" (2043). He pleads with us to not question, "What is it?" but go and trust (2043). Go the read

As the party goes through stages, so does Prufrock's thinking. "After all the cups, the marmalade, the tea, among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, would it have been worth while..." (2045). At this point in time, Prufrock rationalized his feelings of being afraid. He began to consider that the woman was not worth the risk. He could approach her only to have her shift uneasily. She would then state, "That's not what I meant at all, that is not it, at all" (2045). Prufrock left the party without having accomplished his goal of talking to her.

He made an unsuccessful attempt at communication and quickly descended the stairs to escape his failure. While descending the stairs he imagined the reactions the women had to him. "How his hair is growing thin!" and "But how his arms and legs are thin!" indicate the type of women he perceivably dealt with (2043). They were trivial and superficial and herein lay the problem. Prufrock himself, not a shallow person, endeavored to be accepted into this trivial world. Even though the women appear to be educated by "... talking of Michelangelo" their discussions were really faked intellectualism. Prufrock never reveals exactly what the women chatted about beyond Michelangelo so it seemed to be that by sprinkling the name around the conversation they tried to sell their selves and other partygoers on the idea that they were indeed intelligent.

Another possible reasoning behin

Some common words found in the essay are:
Alfred Prufrock's, , Eliot Prufrock, Translated Italian, Prufrock Filled, 2045 prufrock, alfred prufrock, Alfred Prufrock, disturb universe,

Approximate Word count = 966
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Foreign

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