T.S. Eliot, in his The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, takes the reader through the perils of life as a middle-aged man in modern society. His poem takes the form of a story, a narrative, with a character delivering a strong sense of voice and mood throughout the poem, moving away from the use of a strict rhyme scheme and meter used traditionally in poetry. Eliot uses repetition, in the form of alliteration, rhyming and literal repetition of words and also entire lines, to carefully construct a sense of endlessness, or looping, creating a reading experience that seems to, when considering the theme of the perils and struggles of life, tie in some ways to that of the endless Hell Dante alludes to in the quote from his Inferno before the first lines of the poem.
A dominating feature through the entire poem is the use of repetition, through alliteration, rhyming and repetition of phrases and lines, which plays an integral role in the structure of the poem and the kind of reader experience it creates. Eliot’s use of repetition, in the choice of sounds, as consonants or vowels or rhyming sounds that are repeated, is very specific and meticulous, and all geared to creating that endlessly-looping-time experience, which Dante constantly alludes to while walking through Hell in his Inferno, for his readers. A very obvious repetition is that of the ‘s’ sound, seen dominantly in lines from the very beginning of the poem “...certain half-deserted streets” and “sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells” and even “yellow smoke that slides along the street”. Due to the sliding and slipping nature of the repeated ‘s’ sound, especially in where it is used in the last word before the line break, as in “For the yellow smoke that slides along the street/Rubbing its back upon the window-panes” or “And time yet for a hundred indecisions/ And for a hundred visions and revisions” the reader easily slipped into the rest of the poem.
Although Eliot does not in any way follow the traditional script of rhyming in poetry, his use of rhyme hardly seems haphazard and creates a rhythm very much like that of of traditional rhyme schemes. This can be noticed more clearly when the poem is read aloud rather that read silently. For example, in lines “And indeed there will be time/ For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,/ Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;/ There will be time, there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” there is no apparent rhyme scheme, in the repetition of “time”, the “eet” sound, and especially the abrupt use of the non-rhyming “window-panes” in the middle, but when read aloud creates a rhythmic effect of rising and falling tempo, especially due to the break given by the non-rhyming word in the sequence (which is used to rhyme in the rest of the stanza similarly). This again, adds to that never ending, looping sense of time in the reading, where instead of breaking from the rhythm, the lack of strict pattern, or just a pattern most readers are used to in traditional rhyming poetry, the reader is drawn back to familiar (in the poem) sounds over and over, and is seen throughout the poem.
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The stanzas are also written such that they create for the reader the feel of a monologue which can be performed rather just read. This is made especially clear by the use of the constant media res writing in the beginning of paragraphs and lines. In the same paragraph quoted above, the character starts it with “And indeed there will be time….” Most of the line breaks are also such that they are placed, in not just this stanza but most of the poem, rather abruptly, and in many cases, in the middle of a sentence. While it could be said that this is characteristic of most poetry, for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it adds to the tempo of the poem and lines in a way that seems to keep building the graph of intensity and energy for every stanza. This is where it becomes quite clear that the poem is rather heavily reliant on the auditory effect of the words rather than the metaphors or the meanings they allude to. If read aloud and perform, these odd line breaks push the poem towards a theatrical monologue fit to feature in a play rather than a just a poem. This is seen especially in certain abrupt line breaks such as “There will be time, there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” or the use of the ‘And’ right after a line break to start a line in “And time yet for a hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions,” or “And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,”. The use of the seemingly off line breaks keep up the energy and tempo of these stanzas, which, in line of the poem’s dark themes, adds to the effect of the Eliot or Prufrock’s angst or frustration in his theatrical monologue.
Another repeated consonant in the lines quotes above seems to be that of the ‘t’ sound. This sound, in the word ‘time’ that is repeated over and over, seems to be almost keeping rhythm in these lines, for example “And indeed there will be time….There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;/ There will be time to murder and create…... That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me…..Before the taking of a toast and tea.” or in the next stanza “And indeed there will be time…..Time to turn back and descend the stair”. These lines are around the theme of time and the ‘t’ sound seems to function to keep time in this paragraph. This could also refer back to the initial quote from Inferno, where Dante seems to be walking through an endless Hell, the ‘t’ sound functioning similar to the ‘s’ sound in trapping the reader into the poem by creating a loop of time through the ticking of the ‘t’ sound.
In the later stanzas, too, Eliot uses repeating consonants and a non-conventional pattern of rhyming to create a rhythm in the poem which creates this endless, spiraling narrative, almost literally when considering the length of the poem as compared to others. In some ways, the repetition of sounds makes for an easier reading of the poem, where the reader can reach the end of the lengthy piece without much trouble but ironically also creates a spiraling trap that the reader cannot easily escape, much like Hell itself. The repetition of the couplet “In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.” in between the stanzas simply adds to this endless, looping spiral of in the poem.
In conclusion, while he doesn’t use traditional schemes of rhyming, the meticulously crafted repetition of sound and keeping of a certain rhythm and energy in the stanzas through the media res narrative and careful line breaks placed by Eliot sucks the reader into a spiral of the perils of the life of a middle-aged man in modern times through a seemingly endless loop of time that closely mirrors the experience of walking through Dante’s Hell itself. Eliot seems to be sharing the story of Prufrock’s torment to the reader with the knowledge that they cannot escape this, much like one of the damned told Dante of his torment only because he believes Dante cannot escape Hell in the lines quoted before the poem. This effect is heavily reliant on the auditory effect of the repeating sounds rather than the imagery created by the words themselves.
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