Prufrock

· The epigraph is from Dante's Inferno (Canto 27): the section where Dante speaks with a man burning in the eighth circle of hell for the sin of fraud through evil counsel. The man agrees to tell Dante the story of his life, but only because he knows that no one in hell will ever return to earth to publicize his story:

If I thought my answer were to one who ever could return to the world, this flame would shake no more. But since none ever did return alive from this depth, if what I hear be true, without fear of infamy I answer thee.

What context does this epigraph set up for the poem? Why did Eliot choose it to introduce "a love song"? What does it tell us about the speaker in the poem and his situation?

The poem is the private thoughts of a shy gentleman. These thoughts were recorded under the assumption that they would remain private, that no one would know. The speaker is shy and insecure, totally unaware that everyone feels that way at some time or other. I believe Eliot made it a love song because it reflects the underlying emotions and internal struggles that one faces before beginning the courtship; this is what goes on before the speaker (any speaker, if he or she is human and thus subject to human shortcomings) begins wooing his lady-friend. This poem tells the reader that Mr. Prufrock is very shy and unassuming, humble and takes pride in his (however humble) appearance: in short, perhaps rather shallow, since he worries more about how he appears or he fears the object of his desire is shallow and will reject him based on his appearance.

· All of the repetitions about time and how there will be so much time are back-references to a seventeenth-century poem written by Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress":

This is a seduction poem; the man is trying to convince the woman to make love with him. He says, we gotta do it now because there just isn't enough time to mess around and be coy. And besides we are all going to die and what good will your chastity be then?

Considering this earlier poem, why do you think Prufrock keeps repeating that there will be enough time? Does the reference to the Marvell poem give us any clue as to what the "question" may be about?

Prufrock repeats that there will be time because he is patient. He is willing to chance that he will never reach his goal if it means that he will not have to "force the moment to it's crisis". He is more like the coy mistress than Marvell in this sense.

There is another reference to the Marvell poem later on in "Prufrocck." Can you find it? How does it work?

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness, up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife,

Through the iron gates of life.

To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question

Marvell rolls it all into a ball to concentrate his pleasure into a specific area. Prufrock squeezes his universe into a ball to stall for time before he has to roll it towards some overwhelming question. He is merely biding time before he must face the inevitable, whereas Marvell simply cannot wait to throw the ball into his coy mistress' park so she can throw it back to him. Marvell enjoys the courtship game, positively revels in it, at least as much as succeeding in the game; Prufrock dreads the entire process with an awesome, fearsome dread.

· When he starts talking about the "bald spot" in the middle of his head, what do you think he is worrying about?

And indeed there will be time...time to turn back and descend the stair, with a bald spot in the middle of my hair and they will say How his hair is getting thin!

He waits and waits and waits, perhaps too long. The moment is gone and he might never get another chance to 'force the moment to it's crisis' but he let it slip by just in case there's a better moment on the horizon that would make the beginning of their courtship even more special. But like the coy mistress, perhaps the worms will get the best of him as he waits until his hair grows thin and he has even less to offer the woman he desires.

When he starts talking about having known all the evenings already, what kind of a life do you think he has led?

He's enjoyed a rather social life, but always as the "friend" of the ladies, never as the boyfriend. He's perpetually the third wheel or the confidant or even just the guy the girls call when things go wrong with their boyfriends and they need a shoulder to cry on, never guessing it's pure torment to him to have what he really wants above all else so close and be unable to articulate his desire, unable to rise to the occasion (as the poet was unable to rise to the occasion?) So he has known them all already, known them all...because they come to him when they need to talk about their lives for his perhaps cautious advice. He knows what makes each woman tick, but even so armored in this knowledge, he's unable to advance to the next level of the game.

In the stanza beginning "And would it have been worth it, after all," the speaker suddenly changes tenses; now he speaks in the pst tense. What does this change of tenses suggest about what he is thinking?

Perhaps he knows that some of the squabbles that the girls get into with their love lives are simply because they are spoiled and/or just high maintenance women, so perhaps he's dodged the proverbial bullet by not being able to force the moment to it's crisis. Would it have been worth it after all? Who knows. Perhaps the women are unhappy because the only man who really knows them is Prufrock, and he's unable to please them, or at least not confident enough to try. He changes tenses because his musings have led him down the road a bit farther than his feet have taken him. He knows he doesn't have the nerve to roll his "universe-ball" to the Overwhelming Question so he allows his imagination to invent reasons why it wouldn't be worth it, after all, to make his failure less his own shortcomings and more an Informed Withdrawal.