Language and style

The language and the style of the poem express its experimental nature, as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot is considered one of the first modernist poems.

Playing with the language

The poet plays quite a lot with language in this poem through the speaker’s self-irony, through multiple allusions to other literary works and religious characters, as well as through metaphors and personification.

Self-irony is obvious when the speaker describes himself as a second-rate individual who is “an easy tool”, “almost ridiculous” and overall, “the Fool”.

Out of the many allusions he makes, we will only mention here those to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, whom the speaker cannot even compare with:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two

Examples of playful metaphors are the “sawdust restaurants” – for the fleeting nature of material things or the “coffee spoons” – for the passage of time. Note also “eternal Footman” which is a comic reference to time and God.

Tense of the verbs

The poem is written in the present tense, giving the impression that everything happens as the speaker gives his monologue: “let us go”, “come and go”, “do I dare”, etc.

Still, the poet also makes use of future tense simple when conveying the speaker’s perspective on time and his assumptio...