Themes: The Crisis of Mortality
Prufrock faces the threat and mystery of time. In the poem’s early passages, Prufrock repeats to himself the reassuring refrain, “And indeed there will be time.” Yet beneath Prufrock’s attempted calm, he understands that time is an antagonist, a force that will draw him closer to his ultimate destiny. The menace of mortality first rears its head when Prufrock claims to have “Time to turn back and descend the stair, / With a bald spot in the middle of my hair.” The statement is nominally true but essentially false; with his hair thinning, Prufrock does not have a great deal of time.
Prufrock eventually confronts time and mortality when he claims to “have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, / And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.” With his illusions no longer supportable, Prufrock acknowledges the truth: that the “eternal Footman” of death is waiting for him, and that he is afraid of it.
By the end of the poem, Prufrock seems to have nearly embraced the fact of his coming death. He even makes a song of it, turning his mortality into a refrain—“I grow old… I grow old…”—to mirror his prior refrain of denial—“there will be time.” One might argue that the final lines of the poem depict the fulfillment of Prufrock’s inevitable death:
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
The final image of drowning, however, most likely occurs in Prufrock’s imagination, as does the sirenic scene that surrounds it. Thus the mystery concerns who, or what, drowns. Whereas most of the poem takes the shape of a first-person monologue, Prufrock expands the scope of subjecthood to “we” in these final three lines. Eliot—via Prufrock—may be involving readers here, suggesting that the reading of the poem is a dreamlike activity akin to “linger[ing] in the chambers of the sea.”
To arrive at the end of the poem is to be woken up and thus to “drown” in the ensuing return to reality. In this light, Prufrock is not the only figure in the poem to suffer a kind of mortality. The ending broadens the subject of death to include and implicate readers as well. Even though the poem is an individual portrait of Prufrock, everyone can recognize his crisis of mortality because everyone is subject to the passage of time.
Expert Q&A
How do "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" relate in terms of time, solitude and death?
Both poems deal with the problem of the individual. That is, both deal with the desire to preserve some notion of "self" in the face of the inexorable march of time. Where they differ is in tone. Thomas is much more confrontational than Eliot.
What does Prufrock measure his life with in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?
Prufrock measures out his life with coffee spoons, as he says in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." By this, he means that he has spent his life attending to relatively trivial, mundane things instead of focusing on the most important, meaningful things.
Themes of Time, Place, Action, and Mortality in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
In T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," time is a central theme, reflecting the protagonist's indecision and fear of taking action. Prufrock repeatedly tells himself "there will be time," yet he wastes it on trivial matters, avoiding significant life changes. His fear of aging and mortality is evident as he acknowledges time slipping away. The poem's setting further emphasizes Prufrock's alienation, with grim imagery of London and his longing to escape to a mythical, more fulfilling existence, though he ultimately believes it's out of reach.
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