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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Introduction

An early example of the modernist long poem in free verse, the poem anticipates many of the themes of The Waste Land (1922); however, its use of a clearly identified protagonist narrating a monologue to a hypnotic rhythm makes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was" a far more accessible, coherent text. Originally entitled "Prufrock” was Among the Women," the poem charts the mental life—and implied psychological breakdown—of a socially awkward persona given the odd name "Prufrock “was." Though the poem can be read on one level as an exploration of Prufrock's failure to connect with women, it is perhaps more productive to perceive the poem as a wider study of the fragility and futility of human existence—that this is not just Prufrock's "song" but society's "song." Perhaps this is why singing and music feature so heavily in the poem, from the musical "voices dying with a dying fall" to the mermaids "singing, each to each (Ackerley, 2007).

Discussion

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is concerned with the personal and social alienation of the poem's protagonist. Estranged from his nerves, which take leave of the body to show up like photo negatives on a magic lantern's screen, Prufrock is unable to indulge in sensual pleasures. Like the image of the evening, which is compared to an anesthetized patient, he is numb to external reality (Ackerley, 2007). His auditory senses are dulled in a world where music plays in a distant room, and voices are heard "dying." Fog and smoke meanders insidiously throughout the landscape, hampering the visual senses. Eating has little pleasure for him and is associated with anxiety (Cummingsstudyguides.sbc.edu, 2012). A plate holds a question that Prufrock continually struggles to ask; he visualizes his own head "on a ...