The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By saying 'I have measured my life out in coffee spoons', T.S. Eliot is creating an analogy of Prufrock's life. His life is so meaningless and empty that it is possible for him to measure it on such a small scale such as coffee spoons. Measuring a life would take forever if you were to use coffee spoons, and this highlights the true monotony that Prufrock experiences day by day.At one point in the poem, Prufrock asks himself 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' This illustrates his inability to make decisions, even in trivial times, such as picking a food. The artist who painted the picture to the right shows a large, overwhelming peach next to a distressed Prufrock. The peach is shown to be 'larger than life' and it represents Prufrock's internal struggles to choose what he wants to do with his life.

In this picture, the artist portrays Prufrock walking through his life starting as a baby and growing into an old man. Each period of his life is represented by a slice of bread, with a peach for a sun, and an ocean of tea below him. The different foods once again represent Prufrock's struggles with making decisions, especially in regards to simple choices such as what he is going to eat. He spends his entire life focusing on futile events, and at the end of his life he falls into a kettle of hot tea, alluding to Dante's Inferno. The artist uses progressively darker colors from the left to the right to show how Prufrock has lost hope and his life fades from light to darkness.

Jackson Aplanalp Mark Papadopoulos Robert FinchModern Literature / Period 3February 11, 2015