Misery Loves Company

Ah, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." If you're depressed, this would not be the poem to read (Dr. Seuss might work a bit better at cheering you up). Gone are Romanticism's majestic views of a nature whose only purpose is to inspire joy and love to the euphoria-seeking humans. Instead, Eliot invites us to wallow in a cesspool wherein misery and regret strangle our aspirations. However, beneath all of the pessimism, lies an important message. But more on that later...

Poor J. Alfred Prufrock...Here we have a man who has spent his entire life worrying about his appearance and never taking the time to look closer to find the beauty around him (that's a not-so-subtle reference to the great film American Beauty). Throughout the poem, Prufrock's pessimistic outlook permeates every aspect of the world around him and his personality. He talks of having "to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet," i.e. masking his true self to show people what he thinks they want to see. If one does that long enough, he becomes the illusion he has created. Inevitably, this leads to an identity crisis as the person in question has spent his whole life cultivating a fake persona and now becomes a prisoner of it. Prufrock has never truly been himself and now wastes away, the victim of his own social poison. As a result of his inner emptiness, he cannot view the world as anything but a dismal place. He reduces the beauty of the evening sky to a patient pumped full of numbing drugs. People lack identities to him because he cannot comprehend his own.

Does Prufrock have any hope? Doesn't look like it. "And time for yet a hundred indecisions,/And for a hundred visions and revisions." The poor guy is never satisfied. He is insecure and indecisive. Coupled with that, he fears breaking the mold and attempting to venture into anything outside his comfort zone. He repeatedly contemplates as to whether or not he dares to disturb the universe. The irony, of course, is that he has spent his entire life wondering if he should do so while life has passed him by.

In a bizarre sense, the poem acts as a warning to people who do not live their lives to the fullest. If you spend your life putting up fronts instead of being yourself and exploring the various aspects of life, you will come to the same end as Prufrock: broken and alone. He wonders "Would it have all been worthwhile?" People who have stayed true to themselves would answer: definitely. Unfortunately, Prufrock will probably never know. In an unexpected way, Eliot uses his anti-hero as a warning to those of us who fear living life to the fullest. Prufrock did not disturb the universe, and look how he turned out.