The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Love

The first two lines sounds line a tender invitation, perhaps to take a moonlit stroll or a walk on the beach. Then BAM! the third line totally explodes the romance, and we realize this is not an ordinary "love song." Prufrock compares the evening to a patient that is about to undergo a painful surgery. For an audience in Eliot’s time, this must have been a shocking way to start a poem. The grim tone fits the times, however: "Prufrock" was published in 1915, when the bloodiest war in history up to that point, WWI, was well underway, and "ether," an anesthetic, was in high demand for use on injured soldiers.

It seems like Prufrock is oh-so-close to asking his question, as he wonders "Do I dare?" We imagine he’s standing by a door, on the other side of which is the woman he loves. He’s pacing back and forth, deciding whether to knock and enter. In the end, though, he’s too afraid, and he heads back downstairs. He tries to play it cool and claim "there will be time" for all his indecisiveness, but, in reality, this was his big chance, and he blew it.

Prufrock lives through other people, so he only "knows" love by listening to the voices of people in other rooms, which get muffled by music. By using the phrase "dying fall," he echoes Count Orsino, one of the great lovers from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. If Prufrock hadn’t "turned back" in line 39, it could have been his voice whispering sweet nothings on the other side of the wall. But he was too worried about "presuming," or reading too much into the situation with the woman he loves.

We don’t know whose "eyes" he means, but it’s likely they belong to one or several of the women he has loved. They intimidate him and make him feel like he is being examined like a scientist examines an insect specimen. He doesn’t want to have to tell the truth about himself ("my days and ways") to anyone, even someone he thinks he loves.

Prufrock sounds really jaded, like a kid who has been on an amusement ride too many times. He’s seen so many arms it makes his head spin. But wait! Look at that arm over there, in the lamplight. That’s a mighty nice arm, "downed with light brown hair." And the "perfume" is making him ramble on and on. Here for about two seconds, he actually sounds like a man who might be in love, or at least lust. At this point, we would take lust over nothing.

Prufrock has already realized that his best days over, but now he finally comes to terms with the fact that no one will love him. And it’s all his own fault for not doing anything about it. He sees the beautiful mermaids singing in the water, but he has no confidence that they would even turn his way. Still, he doesn’t drop his guard and sounds pretty matter-of-fact about his total undesirability.