The Mid-life Crisis in Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock :: Love Song J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a poem which enters the dynamic knowingness of its title character, whose feelings, thoughts and emotions are displayed in a motley but nonionized sequence, as they ride the mans wavering mood. His is a mood wavering more(prenominal) often towards haplessness than fulfillment, because Prufrock is a man caught in a vicious calendar method of introspection, journey, and retreat. More specifically, J. Alfred Prufrock, as developed by Eliot, is a man experiencing a mid life crisis, brought about by society, and sustained by his profess fear and reluctance.  Throughout his song, Prufrock questions himself. He does so not after a performed action, nor during, but nearly always before. Seemingly inbred in him is the intent to think deeply into everything he does, so that the consequences of his actions may not invoke the attention of a society he sees constantly lurking behind him. sick and fearful of this hovering critic, Prufro ck finds himself considerably shaken by life actions as undecomposable as descending a staircase.   A task considered perfunctory and performed without involvement by others, Prufrock, when atop the staircase asks himself, Do I dare? and Do I hold?(Eliot 811). His reluctance comes with the response to the question, which Prufrock in his self- intelligence answers for society, answering, (They will say How his haircloth is growing thin) and (But how his arms and legs are thin.  Prufrocks conflict then arises because in his consciousness it is not the end of the stairs which await him as he stands at the top, but a society crouched in the shadows and self-possessed to attack.  Henceforth, the cycle is revealed Prufrock professes an intention, hesitates in paranoia at the prospect of achieving it, and then retreats into self consciousness upon contemplating what society would think of him, and his thinning hair as he did it. This fact incites one to peculiarity if Pr ufrock, who repeatedly asks himself, And how should I presume? is trapped by and within his receive mind, as it continues to engage in the aforementioned cycle. It is within this thinning hair and these thin arms and legs where Prufrocks inhibitions, and because the crises he finds himself in, are rooted.  Only a man in a mid-life crisis could be so shaken by a bald spot, so unnerved by silent comments aimed at his thin arms and legs (which leads one to realise his torso to be the opposite) by a society which fuels its oppression of Prufrock with his ingest self-consciousness.