“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Elliot

This poem is about a man who is at the least totally insecure. He fumbles and fidgets around women consumed with the fear of failure and being turned away. What is more interesting is what lies beneath this character or what I feel he stands for. T.S. Eliot like many of the poets in his time period was in a constant struggle to define what had occurred during World War 1 and what that meant for humanity. It could be said that overall humanity as a race was psychologically flawed after witnessing the cruelties that they were capable of towards each other. Mr. Prufrock can easily represent several views that I feel were consistent in the society at this time. The first is the regular soldier that returned from combat. (the important thing to keep in mind is humanity as a whole suffered greatly in many aspects from this war, the soldiers that were lucky enough to return from it were the ones that suffered most directly from it although) The soldier returned to a world that was upside down from where he had left it, totally different from the one he had risked his life to protect, this is not to say that it was not better for most but just totally different. Not only were these soldiers trying to cope with the displacement of returning from hell but they were also trying to adjust to a rapidly changing society around them. One of the biggest changes was women’s ability to earn a living on their own now. The idea of a perfect American house wife with the father as the “bread winner” and the mother as the house wife had been shattered by women having the ability to work while their husbands were away at war. The men at this time were faced with a feeling of displacement, what had always been their position in life was now being challenged totally. Their feelings of distaste for women being able to “bring home the bacon” just like them caused them even more insecurities towards themselves just like the ones that Mr. Prufrock presents, not to mention the ones brought on by the war itself. The image of these empowered educated women are shown in the poem through the recurring couplet about women coming and going “talking of Michelangelo”. No longer did women have to rely on having a husband to have a life. This leaves the men with the responsibility to woo women which some did not handle very well (Mr. Prufrock). You also sense throughout the poem a sense of disparity kind of questioning if it would be all worth it in the end to “disturb the universe.” This would have been a terribly common theme at the time after such a debacle as the first World War. You also see towards the end Mr. Prufrock excepting his terrible fate to always lose in love which he seems to connect directly to losing in life. This could be read as a sort of calling (although I feel it rubs the modernistic theme of only presenting a picture the wrong way) people to stand if able against the powers that would ever call for another catastrophe such as World War 1, instead of cowering out like Mr. Prufrock to his insecurities and fear. Perhaps this is just a euphemism for the end of a poem that was meant to be totally dreary throughout although.