Analysis of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot is a poem I would not recommend anyone still trying to hang on to his or her youth. T. S. Eliot’s poem, about a man named J. Alfred Prufrock, is a pessimistic poem looking at the seemingly wasted life of an aging man. The poem is told from the viewpoint of a very sad man named J. Alfred Prufrock. The poem takes place in the city of St. Louis, which T. S. Eliot does not portray in a very good light. T. S Eliot’s creation of a depressing mood, powerful metaphors, and the character of J. Alfred Prufrock all result in a very disheartening poem, not enjoyable to the middle-aged reader, especially male readers. T. S. Eliot creates an uneasy mood from the very beginning. The first stanza of his poem describes the setting of the poem, “When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table;(lines 1-2)”. Here, Eliot could have picked any number of metaphors to describe the evening, but he chooses to describe it using the image of a person drugged and paralyzed on a table. At first, the choice of metaphor seems odd, but as you read it becomes clear that this particular metaphor was used to create mood. Had Eliot described the evening being spread out against the sky like a picnic blanket on the grass, we would have gotten a completely different vision of the night, and therefore a different mood. In the same stanza, Eliot goes on to note the “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells (ln. 7)." Here the idea of sawdust shows us that the quality of the restaurants is not very high, and instead of having oysters—which are considered an aphrodisiac-- they only have the remnants—the oyster-shells. Eliot also goes on to tell us the “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/ Of insidious intent (l. 8-9)”. Here is another powerful metaphor; the streets to do not simply wind about like the loops in bows. These streets go back and forth like an argument with sinister intent. The next stanza