Literary Analysis: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T.S. Eliot

"Literary Analysis: 'The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock' by T.S. Eliot"

Have you ever been in love? If you have, are you still in love? If you haven't, do you know someone who has been? Now, define love. Love is an action; it is sacrificing things you care about for things that are special to others. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," was a love story that is a common situation for some. Little did Prufrock know that love is much more complex than you think. Love is timeless; history repeats itself. Are we not doomed?

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was written by T.S. Eliot about a man who thought of himself not in vain, but in pity. With ladies constantly talking of Michaelangelo, Prufrock tells us his story out of complete honesty. He degrades himself as a person just because he can't seem to get a girl. All the while, Prufrock leads us down the abbeys of London smothered with the corruption of society. Losing sight of the meaning of life, he takes us to a beach where he walks and looks out to the ocean. As he looks out, he dreams of being underwater with mermaids. He awakens to die while drowning in reality.

J.Alfred Prufrock is a sad man. He doesn't have much, if any, self-confidence, and he finds himself looking at reality as a crude nightmare. Society is corrupted and stained by humanity's desire for a perfect world. Superiority is a nonexistent theory that you can find invading people's minds to fill a void. That void today is "living." People fill this void with things both eternal and temporal. Prufrock could be called depressed and if he was to cut himself, emo. In other words, Prufrock was always on the negative side of himself rarely thinking positive things.

Society at the time was like a family reunion. All your relatives had expectations of you no matter if they knew you or not. But rather than masking their disapproval with smiles and laughter, strangers would give it to you straight just by their facial expressions. However, society seemed only caused to do this because the economy was terrible. With a failing economy, a country or peoples do not tend to be too happy with anything unless it's "going their way" or in their favor.

Humanity is like that. We seek love to both receive and give. Though we indirectly give love more than directly, love is all around us. But love is never balanced in the world unless hatred is present as well. If you really look at the world, balance is everywhere. When your day starts, you are greeted by sunshine; upon arriving home, you are greeted by the sunset and sometimes the moon. This alone reflects the balance of the world. What holds it together is the love and mercy of God.

With love being a repetitive thing and history as well, both are fatal, and our fate seems to follow. J. Alfred Prufrock was a man who