C.S. Lewis had stated once, "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one. To love is to be vulnerable." Evidence throughout T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, explains why a man’s true self and characterization is hidden behind an impassable frame unintentionally destroying his personality. The poem shows how J. Alfred Prufrock, a respectful man, is openly exposed which can show the readers that his sentimental needs can serve as a platform for his connotation of life.
The elegy which is an allusion to Dante’s Inferno is a counter to the question that Is mentioned throughout the poem “Who are you?” This question of self-identity is a major theme of the poem. Prufrocks depiction doubts that his true identity and self is going to be shown at the tea party that he is about to attend. Due to this question of who are you Prufrock will only breeze through this idea, “do not ask, ‘What is it?’ (11-12).
Another allusion is referring to Hamlet. Prufrock has spent most of the poem wondering if he should disturb the universe by asking a question to a women, contemplating if he should ask her or not. He wonders if asking this question is going to be worth it in the end just to have her
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Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot discovers a man who will not accept his greatest need. The irony of Prufrock rejecting to share himself, shortening his emotional growth, is especially sharp at the end of the poem. Prufrock suddenly states his vision of himself and shows the reader the end results of life in this shell which he has been enclosed in. He dimly states, "I grow old. I grow old." (120) and he asks himself crazy and irrelevant questions, "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?" (123). He has become so worried with anyone else seeing a little part of the self behind his prepared face and shell that he worries about