Saying that “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a typical romantic ode to the wonders of love, as the title may suggest, is quite far from the truth. Rather, this poem enters the wandering mind of J. Alfred Prufrock, a man plagued by irresolution, and because of this irresolution, he will probably never truly be in love with a woman. “Love Song” is a dive into Prufrock’s incoherent thought processes and the foggy workings of his less-than-optimistic mind. Through dark imagery, a wavering tone that seems timeless, and carefully connoted diction, TS Eliot portrays J. Alfred Prufrock as a worried, indecisive, and ultimately frightened man. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay The opening lines of the poem set the scene as to the type of content Prufrock has to offer. He uses a simile by comparing the evening, “spread out over the sky,” to “a patient etherealized on a table” (2-3). This is a rather unappealing comparison, and it creates an awkward image in the reader's mind from the start. He then sets the scene for a sort of journey in a city atmosphere: "Let's travel through some half-deserted streets... restless nights in cheap one-night hotels and sawdust restaurants..." (4- 7). Once again, a dark image is projected into the reader's mind, reminiscent of a twisted Gotham City where no one would want to be unless accompanied by someone very dear - someone Prufrock is not with. not. He later goes on to make another type of "etherealized" comparison, which adds to the feeling of sadness and unease: And I have known the eyes before, I have known them all - The eyes that stare at you in a phrase, And when I'm formulated, lying on a pin, When I'm pinned and writhing on the wall, Then how should I beginTo spit out all the bits of my days and my ways? And how should I presume? This stanza plunges in Prufrock's restless nature through the use of carefully connoted language (e.g., "pin") that conveys the image of an insect or animal ready to be dissected. He describes what happens when he meets people he knows: they "stare at him in a formulaic sentence", then corner him, and when he is "pinned and squirming against the wall", he then has to to interact with them and make a decision on how to tell the story of how their day went. For almost everyone in the world, this type of interaction is a part of everyday life and is generally not mediated by a feeling of being stuck. However, Prufrock's restless nature is very similar to that of Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, in that he is definitely not one for cheerful social interactions. Instead, every little detail of life, in Prufrock's eyes, is seen not as a futile task, but as a chain of tense and difficult decisions. Throughout the poem, Prufrock seems to be running through his mind and is quite abstract in his thoughts. The result is a hesitant, fragmented tone that further suggests Prufrock's indecision and digressive habits. One of the subtle ways that Eliot adds to this hesitant tone is the fact that no set rhyme scheme is used throughout "Love Song." For example, a stanza consists primarily of rhyming words, ending with words such as "dare," "stairs," and "hair," then "thin," "chin," and "pin." But the next two lines of the stanza may have no rhyme pattern, and the same goes for the next stanza; it's totally.