Not too Crabby

Have you ever heard a line so modern and so clever " I have measured out my life with coffee spoons " ?

'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is awesome because it has everything in it: many levels of irony and other great use of figurative language (chalk full of alliteration, juxtaposition and metaphors); references to the classics a la Shakespeare (Hamlet), Dante, and Michelangelo, yet in a way that seems to mock, and an ingrained social commentary on the life of urban centers and it’s affect on people. T.S. Eliot is most elegant when he mashes a simile like this together " When the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table " – reminiscent of the late great (kudos to Aaron for mentioning him too) Hunter S. 'Gonzo' Thompson.

Prufrock the narrator of the poem, many critics say, is the epitome of the late Victorian/ early Modern man: shy, cultivated and isolated. Eliot lays out images of smog, and fog of the city streets which leaves an interminable impression of a depressed society. Prufrock adds by consistently returning to this line " how should I presume? ", a question caused by existential uncertainty, perhaps a societal question for the early modern man. The character Prufrock is troubled nonetheless; he seems to be in a perpetual state of paralysis, a state of uncertainty. I think an important line is when he alludes to Shakespeare " I am no Prince Hamlet ", and further readjusts the definition of himself as merely an 'attentdant lord' because he believes he is inferior, nothing special, thus an anti-hero, but in an emotional state that is quite comparable. Prufrock goes on to tell us in this synechdoche that he " should have been a pair of ragged claws, Scuttling across the floors of silent seas ", why a crab I ask? Perhaps he sees himself as so insignificant in the world, that an unnoticed creature like the crab could have replaced him just as well. When the poem ends, it leaves us with this residue of a dreary sense of self: my life is shit, and I don’t know what my next move should be! Not a good read to kick-start the day....a cup of 'carpe diem' anyone?