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John Doe
Mr. Banks
ENG-4UI 01
March 1, 2012
Indecision and Paralysis in T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock
‘To Be or Not To Be’ is a phrase uttered by Hamlet in Shakespeare’s
famous play of the same name highlighting how one decision can change the
course of one’s life forever. Similarly, “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” is
a dramatic poem which focuses on an aging man whose lack of confidence and
personal insecurities cause him to live a sad lonely life until middle-age forces
him to make a decision: to take a chance on love and risk rejection, or to live as
a bachelor for the rest of his life. It is Prufrock’s insecurities which cause him
to see his own physical appearance in unflattering terms. Prufrock also cannot
bring himself to confront the beautiful women he idealizes because his fear of
rejection is too great. Finally, Prufrock’s inability to pluck up his courage and
take a chance on love leave him paralyzed by anxieties and his life devolves into
an empty routine without any significance. In the poem “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, it is clear the speaker Prufrock is plagued by
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indecision and cannot bring himself to talk to the women he is attracted to due
to low self-esteem and personal insecurities.
To begin, Prufrock’s over-sensitivity to the passage of time and his inability
to change the course of his personal life cause him to criticize his own physical
appearance. This is identified early in the poem when Prufrock worries his hair,
arms and legs are growing thin (lines 40-43) which leads him to exclaim later:
I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. (lines 124-125)
Here, Prufrock does not see himself as a middle-aged man in command of his
life, but instead sees himself only in terms of body parts wasting away as if he is
slowly vanishing due to age. He diminishes himself through such observations
and literally believes he is shrinking which will cause him to wear his trousers
rolled when he is an old man. Thus, Prufrock’s fears of time passing and his
own mortality cause him to be overly-sensitive and critical of his physical shortcomings.
Other critics have remarked Prufrock’s obsession with aging and his
physical appearance feeds his personal insecurities, diminishes his self-worth
and is a source of his unhappiness. Michael North in his book The Political
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Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot and Pound notes, “The dread questions ‘How his hair is
growing thin!’ and ‘But how his arms and legs are thin’ reduce Prufrock to
certain body parts”. What North is saying is that Prufrock reduces himself to
mere thin arms and legs making it difficult to see himself as a whole person
who has the ability to take control of his life. Likewise, time does not change
for Prufrock because he says he has “known them already, known them all”
(line 48) referring to evenings, mornings, and afternoons as static and
unchanging in his life. It is exactly this kind of thinking, on the one hand
diminishing his self-worth by criticizing his personal appearance and on the
other suggesting life is impossible to change, which sabotages Prufrock and
makes him unable to take steps toward happiness.
Consequently, this defeatist attiude is the reason Prufrock cannot bring
himself to confront the beautiful women he idealizes for he fears he will be
rejected by them. He complains to himself in the next section of the poem:
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.’ (lines 97-100)
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This comes after he compares himself to Lazarus and announces he will roll
the universe in a ball toward some overwhelming question, which readers
might imagine as his asking a woman on a date. However, his confidence
collapses and he imagines being rejected by a woman who says he
misunderstood her intentions. This theme is picked up again when Prufrock
says, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think they
sing to me (lines 129-130). The critic Michael North states this pessisim causes
Prufrock’s unhappiness for he says, “Instead of living life Prufrock feels ‘I have
measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Therefore, Prufrock’s negative
thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy which leaves him unable to talk to the
beautiful women he adores and causes him to view his day-to-day life as
meaningless.
Inevitably, such pessimism and avoidance of female companionship
leaves Prufrock feeling trapped and paralyzed by a life that has stopped moving
forward for him. He uses imagery to develop this idea when he begins to see
himself in terms of an insect trapped on a wall by a botanist:
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
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To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? (lines 56-60)
Here, Prufrock describes himself like an insect pinned to a wall by eyes of other
people which leaves him feeling trapped when, in reality, it his own anxieties
which make him feel imprisoned by life, unable to change his days and ways.
Because Prufrock is too afraid to take a chance on making himself vulnerable
to another human being, the critic J. Hillis Miller in the book Poets of Reality: Six
Twentieth-Century Writers says Prufrock “exists in an eternal present, a frozen
time” meaning he sees every possible outcome but is paralyzed by his own
inaction and indecision. Clearly, not taking a chance on love undermines
Prufrock’s confidence and his life devolves into a sad purposeless existence.
Ulitmately in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, it is
Prufrock’s own negative thinking which causes his indecision and painful
interactions with the opposite sex. Prufrock’s low self-esteem and personal
insecurities cause him to see his own physical appearance in unflattering terms.
He never talks to the beautiful women he idealizes because his fear of rejection
is too great. Sadly, Prufrock’s inability to take a chance on love paralyzes his
thinking and thus makes him look at his life as mere routine without any
significance. Like Shakespeare’s prince Hamlet, T.S. Eliot’s character J. Alfred
Prufock has a tragic flaw which is his indecisive nature for he would rather talk
about his feelings than change the course of his mundane life.
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Works Cited
Miller, J. Hillis. Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers. Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1965.
North, Michael. The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot and Pound. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1991.