The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
What kinds of words and phrases does the speaker use, and what connotations do those words have?
Cite textual evidence and to explain your ideas.
Cite textual evidence and to explain your ideas.
Prufrock's paralysis revolves around his social and sexual anxieties, the two usually tied together. Eliot intended Prufrock's name to resound of a "prude" in a "frock," and the hero's emasculation shows up in a number of physical areas: "his arms and legs are thin" (44) and, notably, "his hair is growing thin" (41). The rest of the poem is a catalogue of Prufrock's inability to act; he does not, "after tea and cakes and ices, / Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis"