Empoword

Additional Readings 440 absence of identifying characteristics of these women, the phrase “come and go,” and a reference to inauthenticity of identity; this combination implies that these women are fungible, and that their commentary on the celebrated artist is merely a façade to suggest sophistication. They offer no substance of interaction beyond falsehood, flowing in and out of a room with identical, generic conversation while bearing contrived faces, formulated only to meet other contrived faces. In this way, Prufrock is disillusioned and discouraged from communication, realizing his mistrust of language for its inherent unreliability. We, in turn, are encouraged to perceive and reject the duplicity of common social interaction. The subsequent hypothetical speakers in the poem seem to explain and rationalize Prufrock’s fears. In their sole moments of voice throughout the entire text, Prufrock insists that these speakers will criticize his appearance—“How his hair is growing thin!” (41) and “But how his arms and legs are thin!” (44)—or his failure to communicate, saying, “That is not what I meant at all. / That is not it, at all” (97-98, 109- 110). Considering his anxieties of language, it is no surprise that Eliot’s character recognizes the quickly-misunderstood nature of communication beyond the superficial “talk of Michelangelo.” Nevertheless, Prufrock fears criticism for inadequacies which he must already recognize in himself: his deteriorating physical appearance, wasting away with each measured-out coffee spoon, or his inability to control language. This tension, this certainty of degrading or misconstrued response, further contributes to Eliot’s implication of a broken system of language as embodied in Prufrock’s alienation. The penultimate voices Prufrock imagines, the mermaids, identify Prufrock’s proximity to interaction. In another moment of doubt and seemingly scattered thought, Prufrock tells us he has “heard the mermaids singing, each to each” (124). These mermaids symbolize Prufrock’s last appeal for communicative redemption. But alas, Prufrock realizes his isolation—“I do not think that they will sing to me” (125)—and it is human language itself leaves us with the final crushing words of the poem: I have seen them [the mermaids] riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.