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The Love Song Of Alfred Prufrock Allusions Essay

754 Words4 Pages

Allusions play a very important role in enhancing the meaning in the poem The love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock by T.S Eliot. They undoubtedly help the reader understand certain themes and ideas that are present throughout the poem. The poem is about a middle-aged man named Prufrock that is very insecure and lives a very dull uneventful life. He is very educated and intelligent but he cannot work up the courage to approach a woman that he is romantically interested in. He constantly imagines what other people would say to him about his many shortcoming and insecurities. Each day he furthers himself more from society, he fails to ever overcome his fears and address the women. The Allusions present in the poem reference works such as Dante’s Inferno, Hamlet, and To his Coy Mistress greatly assist in enhancing the meaning of the poem. The first allusion in the poem is the opening lines which are a reference to the well-known poem Dante’s Inferno. Eliot opens up with the direct quote from Dante’s Inferno, “S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse…” which is the opening to an entire excerpt about a man talking about how he is trapped in the place no one has every returned from known as hell. This quote is enhancing the poem …show more content…

Near the end of the poem Prufrock says, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet” he does not feel the same way anymore that he did at the beginning of the poem when he thought of himself as similar to Hamlet. He now realizes that he is not as important as the Prince of Denmark and that he is not in any way an important person. In Prufrock’s opinion he would not be Hamlet but rather he would be a trivial and un important figure of the play such as Polonius. This is ironic however because similar to Hamlet, Prufrock’s most cumbersome attribute is his failure to take action. Prufrock analyzes things in his head over and over again without ever taking the initiative to

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