The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 40 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 40 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
This section contains 1,521 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Study Guide

In the following excerpt, Berryman focuses on Prufrock's struggle and ultimate inability to propose marriage.

To begin with Eliot's title, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," is the second half quite what the first led us to expect? A man named 1. Alfred Prufrock could hardly be expected to sing a love song; he sounds too well dressed. His name takes something away from the notion of a love song; the form of the title, that is to say, "i"s reductive. How does he begin singing?

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky...

That sounds very pretty-lyrical-he does seem, after all, in spite of his name, to be inviting her for an evening; there is a nice rhyme-it sounds like other dim romantic verse. Then comes the third line:

Like a patient etherised upon a table...

With...

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This section contains 1,521 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Study Guide
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