Analysis of the poem

Summary

The poem is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man, who is overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally showy.

Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, is a presumably middle-aged, intellectual, indecisive man, who invites the reader along with him through the modern city. He describes the street scene and notes a social gathering of women discussing Renaissance artist Michelangelo. He seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of life to “dare” an approach to the woman: in his mind he hears the comments that others make about his inadequacies, and he blames himself for thinking that emotional interaction could be possible at all.

 The poem moves from a series of fairly concrete physical settings—a cityscape (“patient etherised upon a table”) and several interiors (women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces), to a series of vague ocean images conveying Prufrock’s emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his mediocre status (“I am not Prince Hamlet’). “Prufrock” is powerful for its range of intellectual reference and also for the vividness of character achieved.

Themes

• Love - It’s hard to tell whether Prufrock is really in love with the person he is talking to. He speaks about himself a lot, and he ignores her for most of the poem. Maybe he’s too shy to speak his mind, but there are a couple of points where he almost overcomes his fear of rejection, especially when he is standing on top of the stairs and wondering, "Do I dare?" (line 38). However, he's so taken up with pleasures like coffee and peaches that it’s hard to believe that the feeling he has is really "love."
• Passivity - Prufrock never does anything. In this poem, no one does. Actions are discussed as either future possibilities or as thing already done and past.The only thing he's good at seems to be eating and wearing nice clothes.
• Time - In relation to time, this poem bounces back and forth between the past and the future, almost never settling on the present. One moment Prufrock is talking about all the things he’s going to do before having tea; the next moment he has had tea and still doesn’t have the energy to do anything. But somehow, by the end of the poem, Prufrock’s big chance has passed him by, and he becomes a sad, old man in flannel pants.