The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

J. Alfred Prufrock is a middle age man going through a middle-age crisis. He is talking to a unknown person all through out the poem. I think he is talking to himself because he is doubting him self and i know sometime when i doubt myself i internalize self doubt. example "To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”" another example of his mid-life crisis would be this quote "For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume? " He already knows whats going to happen, and he doesn't see his life being with much. Another example of self doubt would be this line "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?"

I also thing that he wants to die, if you read this line "The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes" the first thing that comes to my mind would be mustered gas they used during WWI. Maybe he is hoping that the gas will reach him and it will end his suffering. At the end he starts to hate on himself "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,         115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool." This man is alone in this world and he doesn't like it.

the quote at the beginning was translated to this

"If I believed my answer was

to a person who'd ever get back to the world,
this flame would keep still without moving any further.
But since from those undergrounds
no one has ever come back alive, if I hear what's true,
I answer you without fear of infamy."






*sparknotes were used again, and an online translator was to translate the quote at the beginning.