Empoword

Additional Readings 439 is even reluctant to embody a supporting character with a clearly defined role. Again, considering the involvement of the reader in Prufrock’s plight, Eliot tells us that the literary and social characters which shape our models of human identity are inauthentic—that perhaps we are all destined to be no more than backing players to fill out a scene, or if we are lucky, provide comic relief. To better understand Prufrock’s disenfranchisement, we must recognize Eliot’s portrayal of human interaction as broken, inadequate, and false. Within the structure of the poem, Eliot seems to imply the inadequacy of direct communication through circuitous, repetitious, and ambiguous text. Even as Prufrock introduces his “overwhelming question,” he almost simultaneously refuses our inquiry to understand what he communicates—“Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’” (9-10). By first calling attention to the ever-fleeting moments of time to instill a tone of haste, and then exacerbating those feelings with Prufrock’s continued hesitation, Eliot highlights the infinite insufficiency of language. Even though there will be “time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea” (27-34), “in a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse” (47-48). Eliot’s recursive language implies that while there is time, each moment will be inevitably filled with the paralyzing equivocation that we have come to expect from Prufrock. In a frustrated interjection, Prufrock sums it up well: “It is impossible to say just what I mean!” (104). More subtly, though, Eliot incorporates only a few voices aside from Prufrock himself, and it is these characters who especially illuminate the alienating nature of interaction and language for Prufrock. It is important to note that while the entirety of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seems to be an argumentative internal monologue within Prufrock’s consciousness, Eliot provides brief voices from hypothetical speakers imagined through the mediation of Prufrock’s mind. The unnamed women of the poem are particularly telling: “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” (35-6). This seeming non sequitur is repeated twice within the course of four stanzas. Between the two occurrences of this sentence, Prufrock reassures us (and, in turn, himself) that “there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” (26-27). Eliot combines a deliberate