Term Papers on Eliots Views Of Sexuality As Revealed In The Behavior Of Prufrock And Sweeney

Term Paper Title	Eliots Views Of Sexuality As Revealed In The Behavior Of Prufrock And Sweeney
# of Words	1081
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.32

Eliot's Views of Sexuality as Revealed in the Behavior of Prufrock and Sweeney

     "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" tells the story of a single
character, a timid, middle-aged man.  Prufrock is talking or thinking to himself.
The epigraph, a dramatic speech taken from Dante's "Inferno," provides a key to
Prufrock's nature.  Like Dante's character Prufrock is in  "hell," in this case
a hell of his own feelings.
     He is both the "you and I" of line one, pacing the city's grimy streets
on his lonely walk.  He observes the foggy evening settling down on him.
Growing more and more hesitant he postpones the moment of his decision by
telling himself "And indeed there will be time."
     Prufrock is aware of his monotonous routines and is frustrated, "I have
measured out my life with coffee spoons":.  He contemplates the aimless pattern
of his divided and solitary self.  He is a lover, yet he is unable to declare
his love.  Should a middle-aged man even think of making a proposal of love? "Do
I dare/Disturb the universe?" he asks.
     Prufrock knows the women in the saloons "known them all" and he presumes
how they classify him and he feels he deserves the classification, because he
has put on a face other than his own. "To prepare a face to meet the faces that
you meet."  He has always done what he was socially supposed to do, instead of
yielding to his own natural feelings.  He wrestles with his desires to change
his world and with his fear of their rejection.  He imagines how foolish he
would feel if he were to make his proposal only to discover that the woman had
never thought of him as a possible lover; he imagines her brisk, cruel response;
"That is not what I meant, at all."
     He imagines that she will want his head on a platter and they did with
the prophet John the Baptist.  He also fears the ridicule and snickers of other
men when she rejects him.
     Prufrock imagines "And would it have been worth it, after all," and if
she did not reject him it would bring him back to life and he could say "I am
Lazarus, come from the dead."
     Prufrock decides that he lacks the will to make his declaration. "I am
not Prince Hamlet," he says; he will not, like Shakespeare's character, attempt
to shake off his doubts and "force the moment to crisis."  He feels more like an
aging Fool.  He is able only to dream of romance.  He is depressed "I grow old"
and will have to "wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" into cuffs.
     He will "walk upon the beach," though he probably will not venture into
the water.  He has had a romantic vision of mermaids singing an enchanting song,
but assumes that they will not sing to him.  Prufrock is paralyzed, unable to
act upon his impulses and desires.  He will continue to live in "the chambers of
the sea," his world of romantic daydreams, until he is awakened by the "human
voices" of real life in which he "drowns."
     The "love song" of Mr. Prufrock displays several levels of irony, the
most important of which grows out of the vain, weak man's insights into his
sterile life and his lack of will to change that life.  The poem brings out
images of enervation and paralysis, such as the evening described as...

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