Who is prufrock addressing

He feels unable to impress the cultured women and leads him to not act on his intentions. The overall mood of the poem seems sad and sorrowful. The poem tells us that Prufrock is getting old and starts to feel lonely. It gives you the feeling that he seems to be slowly giving up on life and failing to see the good and fun parts. The mood of the poem is gloomy and mournful. Prufrock seems like he battling time and age.

It leaves the reader with a sense of sorrow and pity. Meanwhile is giving himself the power to control the time he also contradicts himself when he says that he is getting old as time pass. Coffee spoons are a very small unit of measurement, meaning that Prufrock spent too much of his life worrying about the small details, and being too critical of himself.

Maybe if Prufrock were to focus more on the major beneficial things he has been able to do with his life he would have a more positive outlook on himself, and be able establish more self confidence. His inability to ask the question and his belief there will be plenty of time for everything highlights a theme of passivity. Again, he must be referring to his desire to consummate his relationship with this woman he is addressing. This description shows us how afraid of approaching this woman Prufrock seems to be.

This shows that his question must have involved his desire to let the woman know about his love because he is imagining her saying that she was misunderstood and never truly had feelings for him. The potential for his love to be unrequited proves to Prufrock that he was right to never take the risk of finally asking his question.

This undoubtedly speaks to his character. What does it say about someone who believes it is best to never know something if it means never having to display audacity or be offended? From the Symbolists, Eliot takes his sensuous language and eye for unnerving or anti-aesthetic detail that nevertheless contributes to the overall beauty of the poem the yellow smoke and the hair-covered arms of the women are two good examples of this.

The Symbolists, too, privileged the same kind of individual Eliot creates with Prufrock: the moody, urban, isolated-yet-sensitive thinker. However, whereas the Symbolists would have been more likely to make their speaker himself a poet or artist, Eliot chooses to make Prufrock an unacknowledged poet, a sort of artist for the common man.

The second defining characteristic of this poem is its use of fragmentation and juxtaposition. Eliot sustained his interest in fragmentation and its applications throughout his career, and his use of the technique changes in important ways across his body of work: Here, the subjects undergoing fragmentation and reassembly are mental focus and certain sets of imagery; in The Waste Land, it is modern culture that splinters; in the Four Quartets we find the fragments of attempted philosophical systems.

One of the first times Eliot gives the reader a hint about the person being addressed comes from the ninth stanza. The sounds are fading. Alfred Prufrock. The set of words that best indicates that J. Alfred Prufrock feels uncertain is the second one: turn back, revisions, reverse. He is comparing the time of day to his progressing age. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.