Prufrock Allusions

“S’io credessi che mia risposta fosse / a persona che mai tornasse al mondo / questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. / Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondo non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, / senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo!” (Dante 61-66). This is an epigraph to the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. These lines are from Dante’s Inferno which is about Dante going to Hell and asking a question to a false counselor, Guido da Montefeltro. The false counselor decides to answer Dante’s question because the answer will be kept in Hell with Dante. This epigraph makes an allusion to what happens in the poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock, the speaker of this poem, wants to ask fundamental questions of people; yet, if
It is because he does not want the ritualistic banal talk but instead wants to talk about his fundamental question with other people. He says that if he goes to the party, he has to become a different person in order to socialize with people: “Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent” (Eliot 8-9). Also, Prufrock talks about how women talk in a schoolgirl way, name dropping to sound smart and to socialize with other people. For example, in lines 13 and 14: “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” (Eliot 13-14), Eliot uses trochee and true rhyme to imply the women’s shallowness and how they try to just look
(Eliot 110-119)
Prufrock describes himself as an unimportant character in the ancient myth, like a fool. However, it is ironic that in most ancient myths, the fool is the one who speaks the truth. Prufrock also claims that he is not Odysseus and mermaids would not sing to him: “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me” (Eliot 124-125). Prufrock claims that he is a desperate, vulnerable, and worthless common man in his lonely world; therefore, he should not ask questions but instead behave as if he is one of those supporting actors in the play. In the end, he decides not to go to the party and to find an alternative social life: “I have seen them riding seaward on the waves / Combing the white hair of the waves blown back / When the wind blows the water white and black” (Eliot 126-127). Yet, Prufrock claims that maybe he can live with the imagination and break through the ritualistic “social life” small talk,

until the polite banality wakes us: “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” (Eliot