Questions for "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Study Guide Answer the following questions about the poem. 1. What words would you use to describe Prufrock’s emotional difficulty in the poem? 2. What hints does the name “J. Alfred Prufrock” give us about the character of the “hero”? 3. How could the famous simile in lines 2-3 reveal that the speaker’s mind or will is paralyzed? 4. What is the speaker inviting someone to do in lines 1-12? What is suggested by the images of the place they are going to travel through? 5. What does the name Michelangelo contribute in lines 13-14? What would be the effect if, for instance, the women were “talking of Joe DiMaggio” or “discussing detergents”? 6. In lines 15-25, we have one of the most famous extended metaphors in modern poetry. What is being indirectly compared to what? How many details extend the metaphor? 7. The self-consciousness of the speaker is nowhere more evident than in lines 37-44. What do you think he is self-conscious and worried about in these lines? 8. What does line 51 imply about the way Prufrock has lived? What other measuring devices would suggest a different kind of life? 9. What references to women does Prufrock make in the poem? How do you think he feels about women and his attractiveness to them? 10. How are the setting and people described in lines 70-72 different from those familiar to Prufrock? What might this experience with another segment of city life fell us about Prufrock? 11. In lines 73-74, the speaker creates a metaphor to pointedly dramatize his alienation from the rest of the world. Can you explain why Prufrock thinks he should have been a clawed creature on the floor of the sea? 12. Lines 87-98 echo the widely heard complaint that a “lack of communication” between people is the cause of misunderstanding. What do you think Prufrock would like to tell people? 13. In lines 99-104, Prufrock considers summarizing his life to another person and reaches a point of exasperation that seems close to surrender: “It is impossible to say just what I mean!” Why does Prufrock find it so difficult to express himself to others? 14. Identify the brilliant visual metaphor in line 105. How does it relate to therest of the poem? How does the speaker think people will respond to his “exposure”? 15. Read lines 120-125 closely. Explain how the speaker sees his role in life. Do you think he has overcome his doubts? 16. How would you characterize someone who worries about the part in his hair and about what he should dare to eat (line 122)? 17. In lines 125-128, the speaker thinks that the mermaids are indifferent to him, yet he is held by this romantic vision. Why do you think he is so fascinated by these mythological creatures, and what might they represent for him? Why does he believe they will not sing to him? 18. By means of paraphrase, can you restate the meaning of lines 129-131? When “human voices wake us,” what do we “drown” in? 19. Think about this poem as a journey, a quest that begins with an invitation to join the man who makes it. What do you think the journey has finally led us to? Or do you think that the point of the poem is not so much an answer arrived at as an experience lived? Explain. 20. Explain why this poem—one of the most famous poems of the twentieth century—has been described as a reflection of spiritual emptiness and emotional paralysis. Do you think its depiction of life in Eliot’s day or our own is accurate? Why or why not?