Prufrock Paper
... Even though he is well dressed, he convinces himself the women around him look at him with great amusement and make comments about his thinning hair, arms and legs. T.S Eliot shows the reader how modern man obsesses with his outward appearance, and the results are man’s self-consciousness of what people around him think. Man begins to believe that people around him are talking behind his back. T.S Eliot also perceives man as a lonely soul, choosing solitude over relationship. Eventually the reader comes to identify yet another characteristic of T.S Eliot’s modern man, loneliness. Elliot presents his idea of man’s loneliness in lines 15-22 saying, “ The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeming that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep ”. In these lines Prufrock finds comfort in the enveloping fog around him. He likes to be hidden from the world that lies outside his home. These lines show Prufrock’s acceptance of being alone. The lines paint a very dark, and depressing picture of J. Alfred Prufrock’s home and life, showing a thick fog surrounding his home and Prufrock allowing himself to hide and drown within it all. T.S Eliot in this poem says that modern man stays away from relationships by secluding himself, and so by now Eliot, in this poem creates a picture of man alone with his paranoia, and insecurity. Later, the reader finds Prufrock to lead a life of monotony, lacking imagination. T.S Eliot presents Prufrock as a man who lacks any change in his life, and at a loss for creativity. From lines 50-51 the following is read: “ Have known the evenings, morning, afternoons, I have measured out my life in coffee spoons ”. In these lines Prufrock is now seen as a man who has never experienced excitement in his life or change. He wakes up, has coffee and ponders about what people must be saying about him at that moment, and then goes to sleep. This is the extent of his day, every day of his life. This is among one of the saddest lines in Eliot’s poem. Most people measure their lives with memories of family, and friends and trips they have taken, but Prufrock having done nothing in his life can only measure his days with coffee spoons. To think modern man is perceived as living a monotonous life such as Prufrock’s, is depressing. T.S Eliot also says in his poem that man is unimaginative as well. This idea is found in lines 124-125, reading, “ I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me”. In these lines Prufrock is seen to be truly pathetic in the way that he cannot even pretend mermaids are singing to him. This demonstrates T.S Eliot’s opinion of man’s uninventiveness, and how he cannot conjure up the simple idea that a mythological creature could be singing to him. T.S Eliot says a ...