"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is both a comic poem and a cutting satire on the base aspects of urban life. Its speaker, a bald man embarrassed by his every move, represents a sexual and spiritual sterility that, by the end, the audience realizes is impossible to overcome. The poem does not unfold logically, but in a stream of consciousness, where ideas are only loosely related and there seems to be no beginning or end. This lack of direction and coherent temporal sequence continues until the line "I'll wear the bottom of my pants rolled up", in which the speaker's tone becomes more assertive but nevertheless fails to convey a sense of finality. Even the poem's metaphors compare loosely related things and force images onto each other to create an overall feeling of disjunction and chaos. TS Eliot's judicious use of slant and internal rhyme further convinces the audience that the character of J. Alfred Prufrock, a character who has only "one name and one voice" (Bergonzi 17), is immutably inaccessible, despite its carefully maintained exterior. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Early on, the audience is reminded that there is no way out of the world they find themselves in in Prufrock's world despite attempts to go beyond this social bubble. The epigraph is a quote from Dante's Inferno XXVII, the words spoken by Guido da Montefeltro: "If I thought that my answer was addressed to someone who might one day return to the world, this flame should no longer tremble ; but as no one has ever returned alive, I respond" (Bergonzi 15). The indelible first line then follows this ominous warning: "Let us go then, you and I" (Eliot 276). This powerful but apprehensive invitation reflects the passages in which Virgil gently pushes Dante on his journey through Hell and Purgatory (Bergonzi 15) By emphasizing that the audience has now entered a point of no return, Eliot persuades us of the immutability of the situation of Prufrock. The next two lines of the poem embody the style of figurative language employed in the poem, “When the evening spreads over the sky/Like a patient etherized on a table” (Eliot 276). brooding brutality, which is confirmed in the next line by the fascinating image of a corpse on a dissection table. The combination of "lyricism and brutality, gentle words and harsh ideas" is illustrated in these lines and will become. a dominant element in the rest of the poem (Raffel 26). In this same comparison, Eliot employs the concept of "indeterminacy." This type of rhetoric seems vague because it assumes that readers will understand all the allusions and will be able to construct an entire idea from a few words or words. 'a sentence (Raffel 29) The comparison of lines 2 and 3 makes a comparison between two very independent figures, the sky and a patient. This vague connection relates to the intense triviality of Prufrock's own well-bred existence. does not really live his life actively; rather he reflects on situations in which he might have acted or thought in a certain way. His discursive narrative serves to emphasize his incapacity for warmth and emotional attachment. of this poem lies in the "underlying 'concerning question,' which is never expressly stated" (Raffel 31). It is reasonable to assume, from the context, that the "primary question" that Prufrock cannot. formulate is: “What is the meaning of this life? (Raffel 31) He realizes that life is more than just toast, tea, and cuffed pants; buthe will never be able to explicitly ask this question. Although the speaker never gives a definite outline of his thoughts, the ideas are mostly muddled and topsy-turvy through context, readers are able to formulate this overall question without much difficulty. Indeterminacy is a key element in understanding the purpose of Prufrock's thought and the significance of his metaphors for the poem as a whole. Alongside indeterminacy is the idea of ​​parts representing a whole. Eliot never gives us tangible visual images, but rather forces us to make the most improbable comparisons, for example comparing the sky to a lying patient, or associating "the yellow fog that rubs its back on the window panes" with a cat (Eliot 276). Moreover, he never presents the woman that Prufrock dreams of meeting, "except in fragments and in plural synecdoches of eyes, arms, skirts that one could well imagine as fetishistic replacements" (Christ). The poet presents a somewhat concrete image of Prufrock himself, "My jacket, my collar rising firmly to the chin, / My tie rich and modest, but affirmed by a simple pin", and then proceeds to deconstruct it "by the eyes that look at her. from another into skinny arms and legs, a bald head brought on a platter... The poem, in these various ways, decomposes the body, making its sexual identification ambiguous" (Christ). The following passage demonstrates the tendency to 'Eliot to use the French style of using the definite article with parts of the body, removing the sense of any personal identity: And I have already known the eyes, I have known them all The eyes that stare at you in a sentence formulated, And when I'm formulated, spread out on a pin, When I'm pinned and writhing on the wall, Then how must I begin To spit out all the bits of my days and my ways (Eliot 277) The fragmentation of the? body also illustrates the horror of sex and its power of dissection. Eliot sees sex as “the tyranny of one part of the body over the whole” (North). by Eliot of scattered limbs evokes a horrifying image of “sexual violence [that] deprives the individual of the integrity necessary for action” (North). However, there is also an element of pity at Prufrock's sexual sterility. Although he is capable of expressing desire, he is not sexual enough to do anything about it. He is able to contemplate and appreciate the sensuality of “arms in bracelets, white and naked” and “skirts dragging on the floor,” but he will not be able to consummate his fantasies (Raffel 24). Eliot's language also concisely presents an element of shock. The seemingly lyrical lines “There will be time, there will be time” lead to the ominous declaration: “There will be time to murder and to create.” (Eliot 276). This contrast is also present in the transition from the serious “a hundred indecisions... a hundred visions and revisions” to the mocking tone of “before having a toast and a tea” (Raffel 26). Prufrock's dreamy, exotic observation of "the sirens' song" is overshadowed by the despair of his following statement: "I don't think they will sing to me" (Eliot 278). He is a hopeless romantic and this poem is passionately ironic. The title itself is a great example of this irony. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is constructed as one of Eliot's metaphors, the sweetness and delicacy of a Love Song counterbalanced by Prufrock's bizarre and tense name. “In the poem's full title, the conventional expectations of 'Love Song' are instantly and abruptly thwarted by the absurd proper noun that follows” (Bergonzi 14). In addition, the varied use of rhyme and,., 1982. 24 31.