Wednesday, April 15, 2009

What time in the speaker's life does "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" mainly take place?

This poem seems to take place in the speaker's middle age, or possibly later, as he's approaching old age.


The speaker, Prufrock, is probably an adult, and not a very young one. We can tell because he seems nervous about how his hair is growing thin, how he has a bald spot on his head, and how feels like he's growing old. He thinks about how to roll his pants and comb his hair so that he won't look so old, and he worries about how it's hard to connect with women. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons," he says, hinting that his life has gone on for quite a while. He's desperately lonely. Plus, he's already worried about death and what might happen, if anything, after death. Toward the end of the poem, his comments about how he's "not Prince Hamlet" suggest that he's more like Polonius, the talkative old guy from the play Hamlet.


However, it's important to realize that all of the information I just listed is simply a set of clues, not explicit indications, from which we can infer that the speaker is middle-aged or older.

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