A Lovely Life Song

A detailed Summary of A Lovely Life Song

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot is anything but a love song. Nowhere in its fragmented and disjointed lines does it contain the imagery pertaining to a love poem. Instead Eliot's poem follows more of a dream state of a man reflecting on a life imagined as hell. The imagery leads one more to think of Prufrock floating around between the inconsistent stanzas as of one would in a daydream rather than a man professing his love. Prufrock, as it seems, is a dream figure conjured up by Eliot to lament his own life.

His dream starts in Dante's Inferno when Dante and Virgil are speaking with Guido, and the only reason Guido is speaking with them is because the chance of them leaving escaping Hell is small. This is another reason the idea of a love poem is amiss, not many love poems start in Hell. By Eliot, In choosing this particular passage, begins to say he traveled through Hell with the idea that he may never get out. With his life as a hell to go through with no remission, he begins his lament for his dissatisfaction for of life.

"Let us go then you and I," Eliot says, "When the evening is spread out against the sky/ like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go through half-d

Lingered upon pools that stand in drains,

The abruptness of his ending shows his startled awakening into life that was too late . He was dreaming in retrospect of his life in general as a disjointed and fragmented waste of time by using Prufrock's character as a tool. He was laden with guilt His guilt was laden upon himself in the sense that he thought of turning around on the stairway and starting over again. In an instant, all of the sudden his hair was thinning and it was too late; he had already contemplated far too long on a life once lived and he drowned in his own reality.

He grows older as he contemplates changing his life and he comes to a conclusion < about what>. "No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be/Am an attendant lord, one that will do...Differential glad to be of use/Politic, cautious, and meticulous/Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse/At times, indeed, almost ridiculous/Almost, at times, the Fool."(L.111-119). He feels the is a fool because he has possesses the power bestowed upon his position, with a high status of sorts, but this power has always been used to attend to others needs agendas; he's a fool for accepting it. Now, he grows older still, while adhering postulating the appearances expected by others to the opinions of others.

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-

When Eliot begins to give Prufrock an the image he is on the stairs; as though he were on a staircase as in the stairs of life. People begin to talk of him with his bald spot in the middle of his hair and his thin frame

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hell Eliot, Instead Eliot's, Dante Virgil, TS Eliot, love poem, love song,

Approximate Word count = 1098
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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