Prufrock

The title of this poem is the first clue in which Eliot provides a characteristic of modernism. The title “suggest the kind of irony that is so typical of modern free verse” (Evans) as “love song” (Byam 822) and “J. Alfred Prufrock” (Byam 822) do not seem to fit in the same line of words. Along with the title, the epigraph, which “portrays a man in hell” (Güven 80), who “reveals details of his life” (Evans). He believes his words won’t be repeated on Earth. In the same way, the reader is entering a “kind of private hell” (Evans) as they hear Prufrock’s thoughts. The reader learns how Eliot takes Prufrock’s arrival, hesitation, and failure to explain modern man during the time period. In the beginning lines, “Let us go then, you and I” (Baym 822), there are two people present. “I” must be Prufrock, so “you” is the reader. From the epigraph and understanding the reader is in Prufrock’s thoughts, lines two and three, “When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table,”(Byam 822) set the mood of how Prufrock feels. Lines five and six paint a picture of busy city streets lined with “cheap hotels” (Baym 822) and “sawdust resturants” (Baym 822). …show more content…
Eliot repeats the phrase “Do I dare?” (Byam 823) and “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?”(Byam 823). He is afraid of failure as well as having to “confront society” (Güven 83). There is no solution in modern writing as it is supported in lines seventy-three and seventy-four, “I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (Byam 824). The reader can see that Prufrock rather not be seen, yet still there. At the same time, however, Prufrock continues to question if he should make conversation or come to terms of being lonely forever. This is an example of how the search for the meaning is more important than the meaning