In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, Prufrock is a man who is emotionally in conflict with himself. Although Prufrock is getting older, he feels the need to attract women but is afraid of being rejected or having an unstable relationship like in the past. Prufrock is shown to be truly concerned about his physical deterioration although he is not afraid of death. He also thinks that people in his neighborhood will judge him and gossip about him, which makes him distant from the outside. Therefore, Prufrock's loveless life, isolation and low self-esteem can be linked to the following three symbols: mermaids, bald patch and eternal valet. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayT.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" begins with an epigraph from Dante's Inferno. Translated, it says: “If I thought of speaking / to someone who would return to the world, / this flame would no longer tremble. / But since no one has ever / returned alive from this place, if what I hear is true, / I answer you without fear of infamy”. The speaker, in this case, will tell his story only with the knowledge that living ears will never hear it. Eliot's Prufrock faces the same situation; he has a story to tell – a love song to sing – which he dared not declare among the living. Only now, where no one can hear him, Prufrock can finally declare what cannot be said. He was condemned to a kind of hell for his inaction. This hell is cast in yellow light. Images abound of yellow invading the landscape: “The yellow fog rubbing its back on the glass, the yellow smoke rubbing its back on the glass.” Yellow is a color associated with cowardice. Fittingly, Prufrock's world is cast in this yellow light because his world is a world of cowardice. His inability to express his feelings and fear of the implications this would bring have confined him where he is. Essentially, Prufrock has proven himself to be a coward. This prison is a coward's prison. If Prufrock had sung the song he intended to sing, he wouldn't be in hell. Yet it appears that Prufrock intended to make his statement. He always intended to say what had tormented him. He seemed to feel that he had all the time in the world to act on his feelings: And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the road... There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face for the faces you will meet; There will be time to kill and create, And time for all the works and days of hands... Time for you and time for me, And time again for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before taking a toast and a tea. (22-34)Prufrock's time to act was limited, but he didn't know it. He thought that time would be unlimited (“There will be time, there will be time”), and he discovered that this was not the case. The tragedy is that now Prufrock finally says what he thinks, but his words will still go unheard. He has all the time he needs now, yet his real time has passed. He can't talk to the woman he loves. He can only speak with a great void, certain of not being heard. The verse mentioned in the previous paragraph illustrates Prufrock's constant internal turmoil. He must “prepare a face to meet the faces” he encounters, because he cannot simply be what he is. Simply “making a toast and tea” requires “a hundred indecisions” and “a hundred visions and revisions”. It is so repressed that tea is important evidence. It is clear that the actions of everyday life bring great disturbance to Prufrock. He doesn't know how to act and he doesn't know how to say what he wants to say. Every one of hisstatement is thought and analyzed in his mind hundreds of times. He is paralyzed by fear of social criticism: And I've known the eyes before, I've known them all – The eyes that stare at you in a formulated sentence, And when I'm formulated, stretched out on a pin, when I'm pinned and squirming on the wall, then how Should I start spitting out all the extremities of my days and my ways? And how should I assume? (54-61) The image of Prufrock “pinned and wriggling on the wall” creates an image of him totally exposed and on display. It is very similar to a specimen prepared for dissection. When he is on display, he is vulnerable to criticism from his peers. The eyes that Prufrock speaks of are their eyes. Therefore, it can be seen that simply functioning in the social world puts Prufrock in a state of extreme distress. He doesn't know how to behave and fears being exposed. It is no wonder that he has difficulty declaring his feelings of love to a woman. This is the question that ultimately overwhelms Prufrock: the question of love. This question is presented in the first stanza: “Roads that follow like a dull argument/ Of insidious intent/ To lead you to an overwhelming question…/ Oh, don't ask, 'What is it?'” (8-10). This “overwhelming question” haunts the rest of the poem. The way the sentence cuts off after “To lead you to an overwhelming question…” implies that this is a complex question and one that will not be answered easily. Love could have served as a paradise for Prufrock, even a kind of paradise. Yet he chose to abandon heaven for hell. Why anyone would do such a thing is a question that cannot be easily answered. Prufrock spends the entire poem trying to explain this. Aside from the question of why Prufrock let love slip away, there's the question of what might have happened if he had, in fact, expressed his feelings. This question is what ultimately stopped Prufrock from taking action. The fear of what might happen was simply too great. “And would it have been worth it after all?” (86) Prufrock asks repeatedly. He doesn't know how to express himself eloquently: “It's impossible to say exactly what I mean!” (104). Imagine the possible outcomes of his declaration of love: It would have been worth it If one, arranging a pillow or throwing away a shawl, And turning to the window, said: “That's not it at all, That's not what I meant at all. (106-110) Prufrock harbors the fear that if he were to truly express what he feels, he would be misunderstood or, worse, rejected. This is the fear expressed in “That's Not What I Meant at All.” He runs the risk of loving this woman and not being loved in return. Would it be worth the risk of declaring his love – “Would it have been worth it?” Prufrock will never truly know the answer to this question. The poem reaches a certain climax in the stanza discussed in the previous paragraph. Up to that point, the poem focuses on Prufrock's reflections and hypothetical questions. He contemplates what might have been: “If it would have been worth it,/ To bite the question with a smile,/ It would have compressed the universe into a ball…” (90-92). He also rationalizes his current situation: "Because I've known them all before, I've known them all -/ I've known the evenings, the mornings, the afternoons, / I've measured my life with coffee spoons" (49-51). All these reflections lead to his ultimate question: the question of love. The poem culminates with Prufrock's greatest fear: that he must speak his mind to the woman he loves, and she responds, "It's not that at all, / That's not what I meant at all" (109-110). In a way, Prufrock has justified his cowardice thus far. He presented every reason not to make his statement.,.