Preview

How Does The Love Song Of Alfred Prufrock Reflect Back To Time

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
955 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does The Love Song Of Alfred Prufrock Reflect Back To Time
From the moment that each of us are born, we are perpetually running out of time. The metaphorical sand in our hourglass is always running to the bottom of the glass, no matter what we do to try and stop it. However, most of us do not realize the limited amount of time in our lives that we are given until we are old, and have faced the repercussions that life brings to the table . In T.S. Eliot’s classic poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” time is essentially of the essence. Throughout the entire work of literature, the poem’s speaker always reflects back to time, and how they have lived their life as they grow older. With this poem, Eliot was able to express his beliefs on love, religion, time (and lackthereof), and how they apply to life. It is obvious that, with a title like “The Love Song of Alfred J. …show more content…
Eliot is trying to show how often we take time for granted. He makes this obvious by enunciating the fact that he, the narrator of the poem, is consistently running out of time to do all of the things he wishes to do. The speaker is constantly postponing encounters that are inevitable, like the situation with the woman. This shows how Eliot himself believes that there will always be more time, when in fact, each person, when they are born, are given a limited amount of time on this world. However, Eliot does not realize this until he has grown old, and is facing death. He finally understands in his old age that life simply does not wait for anybody. When Eliot wrote this poem, perhaps he was attempting to let people in on this secret. His mindset was to help the people that do not understand how valuable time is. He believed that a certain message would be taken individually from his poem. He had hoped that the reader of the poem will learn to cherish the time they have, and use it to live their life in a way where they will never regret a single

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot represents age and time through parallelism and situational irony to show that one must not squander his opportunities in life. Parallelism is prevalent throughout the poem and is used to present age in a nagging, incessant way. The phrase “there will be time” is paralleled throughout the piece, including in the stanza “There will be time, there will be time / [...] There will be time to murder and create, / [...] And time yet for a hundred indecisions” (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 26, 28, 32). Prufrock, the protagonist of the poem, repeatedly reminds himself of how much time he has; he uses the concept of time to console himself due to his embarrassment of being too afraid to act on his desires. As the poem goes on to explain, Prufrock does not actually have an endless amount of time, and he begins to age and die. He is “unable to act [... and] he consoles himself with the repeated speculation that ‘there will be time’ to act on his social [...] anxiety” (Persoon and Watson 4). Eliot himself connects with the character of Prufrock because he was known to be extremely introverted and shy; he over-analyzed things until his chance had long passed, much like Prufrock (Bush 1). Another tool that Eliot uses to display the ubiquity of death is situational irony. In the stanza “Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table,” situational irony is used between lines 2 and 3 to show how death disturbingly appears into Prufrock’s thoughts (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 1-3). The reader is not expecting to read such a morbid phrase; “the opening line [...] invites [the reader] to imagine strolling ‘When the evening is spread out against the sky,’ but [the] expectation of romantic reverie is quickly undercut by the macabre image of ‘a patient etherised upon a table’” (Bloom, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 3). Prufrock is haunted and…

    • 2609 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most people expect that all poetry should be close to the same thing if we were to have the same theme, but in fact, although there are many similarities, there can also be many differences too. Upon comparison of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot and Afternoons and Coffee Spoons by Crash Test Dummies we see just this. These two poems share similarities in theme, and reference to time but do not have similar tones.…

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    TS Eliot’s 20th Century poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ is widely seen as a modernist work that Eliot employs to make the reader of the poem actually create their own opinion of what is actually meant by the poem. The modernist movement happened mainly in the late 19th to early 20th Century and started with the French poet, Jules Laforgue. It is easy to draw similarities between Eliot’s Lovesong and all of Laforgue’s works as they both employ symbolist and modernist aspects in the way they describe everything through metaphor. Throughout the poem, Eliot uses many metaphors to describe what Prufrock is seeing, ‘through [those] certain half-deserted streets.’ What Prufrock is seeing is often shown through his fragile mindset. The use of metaphor is an interesting one as, despite promoting a great sense of uncertainty with the actual events that Prufrock is experiencing, it gives the reader a very clear idea of Prufrock’s character. It is undeniable that Prufrock is presented as ‘awkward and emasculated’ as his social and sexual insecurities are portrayed by Eliot throughout.…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. How do we better understand the Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot?…

    • 5385 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Another important element in this poem is In the very beginning of the poem, Eliot use a part of Dante's Inferno. Prufrock says these lines because he…

    • 139 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the author is establishing the trouble the narrator is having dealing with middle age. Prufrock(the narrator) believes that age is a burden and is deeply troubled by it.. His love of some women cannot be because he feels the prime of his life is over. His preoccupation with the passing of time characterizes the fear of aging he has. The poem deals with the aging and fears associated with it of the narrator. The themes of insecurity and time are concentrated on. This insecurity is definitely a hindrance for him. It holds him back from doing the things he wishes to do. This is the sort of characteristic that makes Alfred into a tragic, doomed character. He will not find happiness until he finds self-assurance within himself. The repetition of words like vision and revision, show his feelings of inadequacy in communicating with the people around him.…

    • 971 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The isolation of individuals within society was a key feature of Modernism, and was suggested by man’s uncertainty and lack of direction, therefore leading to the inability to take initiative. Prufrock in Eliot’s piece Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock is portrayed as being a self-conscious, indecisive individual in an Upper class setting. In the beginning of the piece Eliot had included an extract from Dante’s Inferno. Eliot used this piece in Prufrock’s “love song” as if he is taking the audience on a journey through his own living hell, which is his Reality. Prufrock’s trapped state is further reinforced by the image of “a patient, etherized upon a table”, suggesting his alive yet unconscious state. The description of the sky contrasted harshly with the traditional romantic image of an immobilized patient that has no control on their movements. In the poem Prufrock asks both trivial and significant questions, however none of these are answered, and Prufrock himself states that he is “no prophet”, showing the audience his uncertainty. His inability to act on his thoughts is conveyed as he constantly reassures the audience (and himself) that “there will be time”, however the repetition of this sentence instead implies the opposite; he has run out of time instead. The extended metaphor that calls Prufrock an insect, “pinned and wriggling”, suggests his vulnerability and the feeling of being trapped.…

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Eliot uses “His Coy Mistress” as a way to show the reader that Prufrock wants to feel love and needs time to stop, like the speaker in “His Coy Mistress” but unlike “His Coy Mistress,” he rejects the idea of carpe diem which reinforces the central existential idea. Eliot shows with each allusion, the comparison between the main character of that allusion with Prufrock. Prufrock embodies each character and gives the reader, an idea of how he connects to himself and how his existentialist philosophy is responsible for his own…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prufrock Analysis

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Insecurities are an inevitable part of life, everyone posses their own. Similarly, in the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S Eliot, the narrator dwells on his own insecurities when trying to find his place in life. Prufrock gives any excuse so he does not have fit in with high society. Eliot's poem utilizes many repeated refrains, including: "there will be time", "for I have known" and "do I dare”, highlighting the narrator’s lack of self-confidence.…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Without an understanding of the time period when a poem is developed, we fail to fully appreciate and understand the purpose and messages within such compositions. While the contextual detail of some poems may be fairly simple, the way poets put words together often makes these themes, messages and forms abstract and confusing. A reader must attempt to delve deeper and study the context of society, culture, and that of the writer at the time of composition, or they will interpret and push away composed material as meaningless ‘mumbo-jumbo’ – which is what works by poets like T.S. Eliot strived to avoid.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    English

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages

    "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter, Deborah A. Schmitt, and Timothy J. White. Vol. 113. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. 181-227. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. LINCC, Library Information Network for Community Colleges.…

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ts Eliot's Prufrock

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The ironic character of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," an early poem by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in the form of a dramatic monologue, is introduced in its title. Eliot is talking, through his speaker, about the absence of love, and the poem, so far from being a "song," is a meditation on the failure of romance. The opening image of evening (traditionally the time of love making) is disquieting, rather than consoling or seductive, and the evening "becomes a patient" (Spender 160): "When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table" (2-3). According to Berryman, with this line begins modern poetry (197). The urban location of the poem is confrontational instead of being alluring. Eliot, as a Modernist, sets his poem in a decayed cityscape, " a drab neighborhood of cheap hotels and restaurants, where Prufrock lives in solitary gloom" (Harlan 265).…

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    J Alfred Prufrock

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages

    There is no sense of thrill in the whole poem. The first image created in the minds of the reader is that of a silent evening. The next is that of a patient etherised on a table. The Romantics had the notion that the “evening” is healing in nature. It nourishes the soul. Eliot breaks this notion by associating…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Prufrock who is the narrator speaks with an unconfident tone towards finding love. Throughout the poem Prufrock has an unmotivated attitude in which he is regretful about being insecure with himself, especially, in front of women. The reader may notice that Prufrock is very self conscious of himself when he is in the presence of a woman. He also has no drive or motivation to go after them. Prufrock’s lack of confidence causes him to easily be rejected or humiliated by woman. Therefore he does not try to find his love, to keep from being denied and have his hopes and dreams crushed by this woman even more. The negative outlook Prufrock has on life restricts him from being able to find a woman to settle down and start his life with.…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem also talks about how there is plenty of time for everything that is supposed to happen in life. Eliot writes, “And time for all the works of days and hands” (29). This seems to say that the people in this era thought that they had time for…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays