Prufrock Analysis
Favorite Stanza:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
Analysis:
The first stanza of the poem immediately starts out with an invitation. Elliot does not allow us to understand to what the invitation is actually for. This lack of information in turn leads us to confusion and wonder to what it may be that the invitation is for. Elliot starts out the poem with the simile of the night allowing us to view this as the beginning.
Elliot throughout the poem uses imagery that is unpleasant and unappealing to the reader, which allows the reader to capture the mood and feeling of the poem. The rhyme between tedious and insidious in the first stanza heavily emphasizes the negative meaning of each word. The first simile Elliot uses in this stanza compares the evening to a patient undergoing some type of medical treatment. This simile is unusual and could have many possible meanings all which have negative implications. This simile could possibly relate to his in that he compares himself to the evening and in a poor condition is the patient upon the table. But how this is interpreted is up to the reader and many times throughout the poem Elliot causes a slight confusion amongst the reader.
The main question asked at the end of the first stanza is followed throughout the poem by other questions that all relate back to the first and to what the invitation is truly for.
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