Abortive Love in Prufrock & the Waste Land

Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is about an old man who is intimidated by women or maybe just really shy, but regardless he feels that he missed out on love and he blames himself for it. He has given up hope of attaining love and views his life as nothing but a wasteland. In the poem, Prufrock he describes a woman with whom he is in love with. Prufrock sees himself getting older and older each day and thinks that she will not be interested in him when he gets older. However, through digging deeper and examining the piece more closely we can find that this is meant to be an ironic and tragic tale of a man who feels isolated and incapable of decisive action. The term “love song” is used very loosely because Prufrock longs to profess love and affection to a woman, but is too afraid to do it.

Prufrock can be viewed as a symbolic character but whether he represents the author or mankind in general is questionable. However, comparisons between the character of Prufrock and Eliot himself beg to be made. In Eliot’s early writing years, he goes by the name “T. Stearns Eliot”—closely resembling that of his meticulously developed character in the poem. Eliot privately expressed frustration to friends that he was still a virgin at age 26, and had great difficulty interacting with women, which is the subject at the root of this poem.

Prufrock imagines he is on his way somewhere to meet women—a social place in which he feels nervous and inadequate. He expresses his insecurities in line 40 when he says “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—{They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’}” and later in line 55 when he says “And I have known the eyes already, known them all—the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on a wall” (Eliot, lines 55-58). He feels judged by others, particularly the women, and feels as though he is no bigger or more important to them than a bug pinned...