Why Prufrock?

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Sad, isn’t it? T.S. Eliot has J. Alfred Prufrock say this as he contemplates his ineffectual attempts at living. Prufrock symbolizes modern man. From the first image of the poem man is anesthetized, spread on a table ready for life to be done to him, around him. He can’t connect with others including women though he admires them and woud approach them if he dared.

He is a city man: no rural farm boy or man of the soil here. The unfeeling concrete and murkiness of the foggy air, the dim lights through haze, city living rooms are his territory. People he sees at parties are as vain as he, “talking of Michelangelo.” He isn’t effeminate, but he lacks qualities that we admire in a man: courage, forthrightness, resolve. He is timid and lacks the nerve to break out of himself, his comfort zine, and relate to those around him. His world is sterile and superficial — a world of “coffee spoons.” Starbuck’s fans might recognize (and maybe take offense) at the image of one’s life being hanging out in coffee shops with strangers or “friends” coming in through wifi.

So Eliot gives us this picture of modern man  - monied, sophisticated, working, urban, informed — but feckless, paralyzed, and intimidated by real relationships. He has all the accoutrements of humanity needed for life, but lacking any spiritual force, the potential for real significance lies dormant. 

 ”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” isn’t a love song at all. There’s nothing about love in the poem. Eliot summarizes modern man here:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous–
Almost, at times, the Fool.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/eliot.html