The Love Song of

J. Alfred PrufrockT. S. Eliot

1st Hour Mrs. Brooks Literature30 March 2012

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns• Born: September 26, 1888• Died: January 4, 1965• Family was from England then moved to St. Louis• Father: Henry Ware Eliot• Mother: Charlotte Champe Stearns• Brother: Henry• Sisters: Ada, Margaret, Charlotte, Marian• Married Vivian-Haigh Wood and then Valarie Fletcher

AccomplishmentsFirst Works

• Prufrock and Other Observations- 1917

• The Sacred Wood- 1920• Sweeny Agonists- 1932

• Greatest work considered to be “The Waste Land”

Awards• Nobel Prize- 1948• Four Tony Awards

Education• Smith Academy• Milton Academy• Harvard University

SUMMARYAt first Prufrock asks you to go with him through the many “deserted streets”,

and “one-night cheap hotels”, and “the sawdust restaurants”. He asks you to go tothe “room where women go talking of Michelangelo.” It is a yellow fog laden Octobernight, and there will be a time for everything. Do I dare to look back on my life, turn

back the clock with how old I am? I have lived a long and full life and death is nota stranger. He quotes Hamlet by wishes he was a crab who could go back. He has

seen death at his doorstep, and was afraid. He continues’ “would it have been worthwhile to have bitten off the matter with a smile? To squeeze the universe into a ball

and roll it towards some overwhelming question. This is not what I meant at all.”He is not Prince Hamlet, not a hero; he sometimes plays the part of the attendant

lord who is glad to give advice. He will sometimes, like us all, play the Fool. He growsold. He walks along the beach, and hears the mermaids sing, not to him though. Hesays we have lingered in the depths of the sea until human voices wake us, and we

drown.

Poem Analysis• The meaning of the poem was that the author was having

a man looking back on his life and him saying lets take advantage of the opportunities that life throws at us and just roll with it. It is like the author seems to be at the end of his life and is trying to cram as much as he can in the time he has left.

• Themes- regret, missed opportunities, lazy

• Do things in the present that you will be proud to look back upon when you are older, live life to the fullest

LINES 99-110And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth whileIf one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:"That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

It is saying that are the things that you are doing now when you have anything in the world that you can do will what you are doing now be worth it all in the end.

Devices• Simile-It says “Streets that follow like a tedious

argument”• Repetition-it keeps on saying would it have

been worth it• Allusion- mentions Michelangelo, people were

talking about him; it also talks about Lazarus coming back from the dead because he has come back to talk to the people

Human Life Cycle

Flower

Photos