Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our "How to Read a Poem" section for a glossary of terms.
Sinister Streets
The poem begins with Prufrock inviting us to take a walk with him, but we soon learn that this isn’t some romantic tree-line avenue by the river. Quite the opposite, it seems to be the seediest part of town. True to Prufrock’s circular and evasive style, the poem returns several times to the imagery of these gritty streets, with contrast with the prim and proper middle-class life he seems to lead. Just like our narrator, the streets are misleading and go nowhere.
Lines 4-7: Parts of the scene are depicted using personification. It’s not the "retreats" that are "muttering," but it seems that way because they are the kinds of places where you would run into muttering people. Also, the nights aren’t actually "restless"; they make people restless.
Lines 8-10: In this simile, the winding, twisting streets are compared to a "tedious argument" that makes people lost with confusion. An "argument" is a line of reasoning – lawyers make arguments, for example. Usually arguments are supposed to answer questions, but this one only leads to "an overwhelming question."
Lines 13-22: An extended metaphor comparing the streets to a cat runs through this entire stanza. Prufrock never actually uses the word "cat," but it’s clear from words like "muzzled," "back," "tongue," "leap," and "curled" that he is talking about a sly little kitty.
Line 64: The lamplight from the same streets reveals the hair on the woman’s arm.
Lines 70-72: Prufrock returns to the setting of the beginning of the poem to give the imagery of a man leaning out of a window and smoking a pipe.
Eating and Drinking
Have you ever seen one of those PBS shows or period films where British people sit around and sip tea and eat finger foods? "Prufrock" offers a parody of this easy-going tradition, as Prufrock thinks constantly about he has just eaten, what’s he’s about to eat, or what he may or may not eat in the future. Especially tea. He’s a total caffeine junky, which may explain why he seems to talk so much. It’s one of those small daily pleasures he just can’t live without.
Line 7: Most of the food and drinks in this poem sound nice, but not the oysters at this low-class restaurant. There’s even sawdust on the floor to soak up all the spilled drinks.
Line 34: Prufrock has big plans to accomplish before "toast and tea" in the afternoon.
Line 51: In this famous metaphor, Prufrock says that the spoons he uses to measure his coffee are like a "measure" of his life, as well. Here the spoon is a synecdoche that actually refers to the whole process of sitting around in the afternoon and sipping on a nice, hot, caffeinated drink. Essentially, he lives from one cup of coffee or tea to the next.
Line 81: It’s very ironic for Prufrock to claim he has fasted, considering that we know how much toast and marmalade he likes to eat. What nerve!
Lines 89-90: The cups, marmalade, tea, and porcelain all refer, once again, to Prufrock’s favorite pastime. Did somebody say "tea time!"
Line 91: It seems that Prufrock has trouble thinking of anything except eating. Here he discusses "the matter" of his big question using the metaphor of taking a bite.
Line 122: Before Prufrock was wondering whether he "dared" to ask his question. Now that the opportunity has slipped by him, he has other important things to worry about: such as whether to eat a peach. (Just eat the darned thing, man).
Body Parts
Prufrock is very concerned about his reputation, and he doesn’t want to stick out in a crowd. He’d rather people not notice him at all, which is why he seems uncomfortable with doctors and scientists, whose jobs involve examining and taking things about. But he’s also like a scientist himself in the way that he "cuts people up" (yikes) in his mind, reducing people, and especially women, to a collection of body parts. He loves to use the "synecdoche," which takes one part of an object and uses it to represent the whole. He talks about "faces," "eyes," and "arms," but never full human beings.
Lines 2-3: Although it doesn’t directly deal with body parts, the simile comparing the evening to a patient who has been put under anesthesia ("etherised") on a surgery table prepares us for all the metaphorical "surgery" and "dissecting" that Prufrock does when he sees people only as body parts.
Lines 27-29: The "faces" are a synecdoche; you don’t go out just to meet a face, you go out to meet the entire person.
Lines 40-44: Prufrock’s "bald spot" is a repeated symbol of his middle age, just as his nice clothes are a symbol of his relatively high social class. Unfortunately, the clothes are only good feature (that we know of). Indeed, he also has thin arms and legs. Which is surprising, because the guy eats all the time.
Lines 55-58: Again, the eyes are a synecdoche – they are a part of a person used to stand for the whole person. After all, eyes can’t "formulate," only a thinking person can do that. He uses the metaphor of a scientist examining an insect specimen to describe the way he feels under the gaze of those critical "eyes."
Lines 62-67: Sigh, here we go again. The arms are a part that stands for a whole – in this case, a whole woman. Synecdoche!
Line 82: Prufrock gets decapitated! The poem just turned into a Quentin Tarantino movie. Actually, we’re not sure what he means here, except that he is making a metaphorical allusion to John the Baptist from the Bible, whose decapitation is regarded as an example of Christian sacrifice. Prufrock is comparing his own sacrifice to John’s.
The Ocean
Prufrock suggests that he might be better suited to living in the deep, cold, lonely ocean than in the society of other people. We think he’s on to something. But when he ends up in the ocean through some crazy, dream-like turn events at the end of the poem, he doesn’t do very well. In fact, he drowns.
Lines 73-74: The "claws" are synecdoche. They stand for a crab, which is the animal you’d most likely think of as "scuttling" on the ocean floor. Prufrock is calling himself crab-like.
Line 123-131: The poems ends with some amazing ocean imagery, including the singing mermaids and the sea-girls wearing seaweed. In one of the poem’s most creative metaphors, the white-capped waves are compared to "white hair."
Rooms
Prufrock spends most of the poem cooped up in rooms, eating, drinking, and overhearing other people’s conversations. He also fantasizes a lot about entering rooms – perhaps bedrooms – where the woman he loves can be found. Always the pessimist, he images a woman leaning on a pillow who rejects him. At the end of the poem, he just might have found the perfect room for him: at the bottom of the ocean.
Lines 13-14, 35-36: These lines are one of the most famous refrains in a poem with many of ‘em. These verses are repeated in exactly the same form twice in the poem.
Lines 38-39: We know that Prufrock is inside of a house – and probably standing outside a room – when he tries to decide whether to go in. He chickens out, though, and he’s back downstairs.
Lines 52-54: The "dying fall" of voices from another room is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Count Orsino, one of the lovers in that play, refers to the "dying fall" of music that reminds him of his love. Therefore, it is ironic, when the voices Prufrock hears are covered up by "music from a farther room."
Lines 75-79: The afternoon/evening is personified as a person who is sleeping alongside Prufrock and his fictional listener in a room after "tea and cakes and ices."
Lines 107-110: The woman in Prufrock’s imagined worst-case scenario must be in a room of some kind, probably a bedroom or some other comfortable place. She lays on a pillow and turns to the window.
Line 129: "Chambers" is a word that can refer to any small space – like the "chambers" of the heart muscle – or it can refer specifically to a bedroom.
Hamlet
Prufrock spends much of the poem acting like the notoriously indecisive Hamlet. But, in the end, he decides that even indecision is too decisive for him. No, he’s more like an assistant to a lord – a guy who does nothing but follow orders and generally acts like a tool.
Lines 111-119: In this important metaphor, Prufrock likens himself to Prince Hamlet, the title character from Shakespeare’s most famous play. But then he decides he’s actually more of an "attendant lord" who could be confused for a fool, which we think is an allusion to Polonius, the father of the character Ophelia in the same play.
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