![]() Ultimately, Prufrock sadly admits his insignificance and failure, constructed in his rejection by women: “I do not think they (the mermaids, or the women) will sing to me.” ![]() Prufrock’s spiritual demise appears partly caused by lack of intimacy with women, who are constructed as guardians of the inner life despite being rendered superficial and threatening. Women are conjured up as disembodied creatures (“skirts that trail along the floor, Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl”). Prufrock’s own triviality is exposed (“They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin'”) when he fearfully and obsessively dwells on critical female scrutiny (“I have known the eyes already, known them all / The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase”) and, painfully, self-loathingly, reduces himself to an insect “pinned and wriggling on the wall”. Eliot dramatises part of Prufrock’s emotional paradox, his fear of women (“Is it perfume from a dress / That makes me so digress?” (Line 65)) and longing for intimate connection contrasting with a more sympathetic dismissal of their trivial social lives filled with taking of toast and tea. Eliot sees women as self-contained, but his Prufrock is full of doubts and insecurities, “Full of a hundred indecisions / And a hundred visions and revisions” (Line 32).Ĭruelly critical, T.S. Women are culturally secure and superficial, “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo,” whereas Prufrock is displaced, trapped traipsing along certain half-deserted streets, even though Prufrock himself is contemptuous of such a shallow culture. Eliot articulates Prufrock’s feelings of inadequacy, both socially and sexually, and suggests a psychological distance within a palpably social context. The poem’s title emphasising the personal nature of Prufrock’s love song, creates an expectation of an exploration of Prufrock’s innermost feelings, an expectation left unfulfilled. Prufrock’s timidity prevents him from forming intimate connections his fear of failure prevents him from trying. Eliot’s critical view of Prufrock as timid, self-conscious, and self-protective. Recurring questions, “Do I dare?” and “And should I then presume? And how should I begin?,” reveal T.S. Eliot indicates Prufrock’s inability to engage fully with life, his avoidance of choice, and fear of closeness, further explored later in the poem. ![]() “To lead you to an overwhelming question.” Eliot follows by hinting at Prufrock’s detachment from the human heart: Prufrock opens inviting readers to join him, “Let us go then, you and I.” The tale of his emotional demise is heralded by unromantic imagery, “When the evening is spread out against the sky,” which T.S. Prufrock’s inadequacy, his absence of passion, ironically contrasts with Dante’s. ![]() Eliot’s use of Dante’s Inferno for his intellectually erudite epigraph introduces his vision of hell without redemption, inviting comparisons with Prufrock’s search for meaning. Give us your paper requirements, choose a writer and we’ll deliver the highest-quality essay! Order now Eliot plunges Prufrock into the recognition of personal inadequacy, accompanied by an unrelenting desire for significance and recognition. Prufrock’s lack of connection with others, his alienation, self-debasement, and the absence of passion prevent him from discovering life’s meaning and his inner self. Eliot uses Prufrock and the radical poetic methods to explore a modern condition: a sense of social and moral corruption. The descent eventually devolves into the spiritual death of Prufrock when, having glimpsed a moment of redemptive beauty, human voices wake him, and he “drown(s).” T.S. Eliot’s dramatic persona, the narrator, and protagonist, Prufrock. The poem details a moral and spiritual journey-a descent suffered by T.S. The resultant tonal and structural discontinuity, as well as abruptly shifting images and focus, dramatizes a scattered life and a fragmented human psyche. Eliot’s poem, ironically titled a love song, is carefully constructed in a series of fragments. Eliot offers a critical and pessimistic vision of the modern spiritual condition.
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