Marisa Pagnattaro is a freelance writer and is the Book Review Editor and an Editorial Board Member of the Georgia Bar Journal. She is a teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, Athens. In the following essay, Pagnattaro provides a close reading of "The Love Song of 1. Alfred Prufrock, " emphasizing its comic elements.

It is a mistake to approach T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with the same seriousness as for The Waste Land. To enjoy this poem and get the most out of the verse, readers should have a wry sense of humor. Prufrock is an anxiety-filled, insecure, middle-aged bachelor who fears that his expressions of love will be rebuffed. First published in Poetry in 1915, and then collected in Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917, Eliot used the traditional form of the dramatic monologue for the speaker, Prufrock, to express his romantic dilemma...