T.S Elliot Poem Analysis

Resource Description

Theme

Emotional and moral decay

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

• Intertextual references (e.g. John the Baptist, Lazarus, Dante’s Inferno) prove Prufrock’s lack of imagination. Lines 111-119; “No! I am not Prince Hamlet…” is an insertion of iambic pentameter to imitate Prufrock’s unimaginative personality.
• Decay process evident throughout structure – opening stanzas of length and digression (representing Prufrock’s personality), ending stanzas short and vague (representing decay and unwillingness to continue).

Preludes

• The assimilation of the man’s soul with the street (“trampled by insistent feet”) to show the extent of urbanisation and how this causes the decay of the human condition.

• The paradox of the “infinitely gentle/infinitely suffering thing” reduces pain in the a modern world where pain is commonplace to merely a “gentle” emotion.

• Eliot presents us with an aggregation of negative urban images, “Burnt-out ends…grimy scraps…broken-blinds…muddy feet,” which reflect the disintegration of the modern world.

“The conscience of a blackened street/Impatient to assume the world” is a metaphor for the spread of immorality in the modern world.

and more…