“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

The Question of the Reality of Experience Itself

This video has absolutely amazing visuals and images that correspond to the poem. Check it out!

T.S. Eliot incorporates the question of reality of experience itself into “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” He creates a surreal setting– a dreamlike environment which ultimately poses the question on the reality of the situation. In the poem, a speaker suggests that a person follow him to different places:

“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.”

The proposed setting seems to be an imaginary creation of the speaker, which ultimately supports the idea that this poem is an exploration of a nonexistent reality. In addition, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” suggests there is a lonely speaker who does not interact with others. The inability of Prufrock to gain enough courage to speak to others is evident:

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?”

While Prufrock presents seclusion, other aspects present interaction: “The women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.”The combination of the loneliness that the speaker experiences and the interaction that others experience provides juxtaposition within the text and therefore, creates an even greater gap between the proposition of both reality and fantasy. Thus, a blur comes into effect and the reader is essentially perplexed with the reality of this poem.

The lack of communication between Prufrock and others in society that Jeff Valentine suggests presents the more realistic character in human beings.

“Prufrock, yes, this is T.S. Elliot’s piece that I’m alluding to here, is completely and utterly unable to communicate with the world around him. Absolutely anything he says will result in the woman saying ‘That is not what I meant at all./That is not it, at all.’ This is a much more realistic presentation of a character, and encompasses the piece of modernism of presenting and inner psycological reality, here, the reality of a lack of communicating ability.”

Despite the reality of a lack of communicating ability presented between different people in the poem, a fantasy also exists inside the mind of Prufrock:

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

The reader is, then, faced with the question of whether or not the poem exhibits reality. Indeed, for the most part, the reader is dealing with the inner psychological reality, including the ‘flow’ of experience, through the various thoughts that Prufrock shares. Although the dreamlike state of this poem might propose a fantasized experience, it is understood that the flow of thoughts that Prufrock encounters in his mind only creates the dreamlike effect, but that it is truly utilized to depict the inner psychological reality.