Empoword

Additional Readings 437 out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?” (59-60). In his position of retrospect, Prufrock imbues a clear tone of regret and loss, noting that he has expended most of his life in apprehension; he links his spent time to the humdrum by means of the “coffee spoons,” to the useless and disposable by means of “butt-ends.” By integrating a theme of transience and a tone of urgency, Eliot begins to explore Prufrock’s social fears while also preparing to demonstrate the failure of language, as I discuss later. Considering the entanglement of the reader in the poem’s exploration of Prufrock’s psychological torture, we read that transience and mortality command all of our day-to-day actions and interactions—and how could this not leave us terrified and alienated like Prufrock himself? As a consequence of such social fear and detachment, Eliot suggests, Prufrock struggles to establish public or personal identity: because he cannot truly associate with other members of his world, he cannot classify himself within a framework of socially- defined identity. Prufrock frames his failure to adopt an archetype using a strikingly dehumanizing synecdoche: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (73-74). Prufrock finds it more fitting that he be separated from the species than to continually find himself inadequate to the measure of social roles. These lines directly precede a process in which Prufrock evades commitment (as we learn is characteristic) by presenting three models of which he falls short, and then discarding the possibility of ever identifying his purpose. First, Prufrock summons John the Baptist as a prototype by envisioning his own “head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter” (82), but then immediately negates the comparison in the next line: “I am no prophet” (83). Prufrock identifies with the tragic, violent end of John the Baptist, reminding us of his overwhelming fear of the outside world. He makes clear that he can relate only to the death of the man, but not to the life: Prufrock believes that he lacks some essence of a prophet—perhaps charisma or confidence, perhaps respectability or status. Prufrock seeks to find a more apt comparison, now considering a person as socially tortured as he but who ultimately discovered meaning. Prufrock attempts to adopt a different Biblical figure as a model of identity: Would it have been worth while […]