T.S. Eliot's "Preludes" presents a predominantly futile existence in a desolate world through its use of imagery, metaphor, rhyme, and rhythm to reveal a life stuck in the boring and repetitive ritual of waking, eating, working, and sleeping. The solitude of the female character caught up in loneliness and the dreariness of the urban landscape is the poem's main theme.

The first stanza, the "smells of steaks", exemplifies the monotonous nature of the landscape and sets the tone for the rest of the poem. The fruitless search and boredom is evident through the cigarette metaphor of "burnt out ends of smoky days" - a representation of people's lives burning away to nothing with squalor, and a lack of vision. These patterns of imagery appear throughout to penetrate the reader's mind and cement the desolate world. Images of decay and disintegration: "Burnt out ends", "grimy scraps", "withered leaves...