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Eliot finds it impossible to actually unveil the mystery and tell all, it is not only that complete knowledge of the universe is impossible, but that the mystery even when reached and experienced, as when hearing the luring song of the mermaids, it can not be told.
This distance from mystery is due also to the modernist consumerist society, as Daly noticed in his study:
Where Marx imagined commodity fetishism coming to an end only with the demise of capitalism itself, Hemingway sees a new relation to objects arising through a qualitative change in the subject, through a mutation in appetite T.S. Eliot's typically ineffectual modern subject, J. Alfred Prufrock, has to wonder if he dares to eat a peach [..] "(Daly, 152)
Thus, the main theme of the poem is the discrepancy between modernism and the primitive, between , 1999
Ferrall, Charles. Modernist Writing & Reactionary Politics.
Port Chester, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2001
Goldman, Jane. Modernism, 1910-1945: Image to Apocalypse.
Gordonsville, VA, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004
Lamos, Colleen. Deviant Modernism: Sexual & Textual Errancy in T.S. Eliot, James Joyce & Marcel Proust.
Port Chester, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1999
Works Cited
Daly, Nicholas. Modernism, Romance & the "Fin de Siecle": Popular Fiction & British Culture.
Port Chester, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2000
Eliot, Thomas Stearns The Oxford Book of Verse, New York: Bartleby, 1999
Ferrall, Charles. Modernist Writing & Reactionary Politics.
.. I grow old...' are the evidence of the impending fear of death. One unusual part of the poem is how Eliot, or Prufrock, puts himself into a role in one of Shakespeare's plays and then admits that he is no Hamlet by saying 'No! I am not the Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.' Although I am guessing, I feel that Eliot was trying to say that Shakespeare's
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, and the Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost are two poems that imagine how life might be if the narrator had acted differently. However, the two poems are almost opposites in their intent and impact. Eliot's poem is a lamentation over a life not lived, over a failure to act. Frost's poem is a celebration over an unconventional life bravely
Prufrock also distances himself from the people at the tea, saying they talk of "Michelangelo," which seems to say he has little in common with them. A man who loves a woman will try to find things in common with her to enjoy her company. This man instead finds things that make them different. Finally, there is an underlying gloomy theme throughout the poem that cannot point to love. Prufrock
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Ultimately, as his dialogue continues, it becomes clear that Prufrock is afraid. He is afraid of growing old, of ending up alone, and of being ridiculous and a fool because he did not to back to the woman he loved and make the relationship right. Eliot writes, "At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -- / Almost, at times, the Fool" (Eliot 118-119). Prufrock then is a sad and lonely character
As attitudes of literacy help students succeed in school, this is an important development to encourage. Thus, students should be encouraged to interpret "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" for themselves, learning that no right or wrong answer exists, and that literature is a conduit through which one can have a personal response. The following lesson plan can stand by itself or follow the teaching of the poem