The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and American Beauty

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot is typically considered to be a very bizarre and abstract poem, and one with many different possible themes and plots which can be taken from it. I, personally feel that the plot of the poem is that of a man either dying or of an eldlerly man, with not much more time in this world, who looks back on his life with regret. This plot reminds me of the ending of the 1999 film “American Beauty”, which stars Kevin Spacey as the middle aged Lester Burnham.

In American Beauty, Lester’s life is suddenly changed when he sees a teenaged cheerleader, played by Mena Suvari, at a basketball game at his daughter’s high school. Lester is immediately drawn to her, and changes his life to try to attract her. Lester quits his job, gets a new job working at a local burger stand, replaces his Camry with his dream car, a Pontiac Firebird, and starts to work out to look better for Mena Suvari’s Character. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, an unnamed narrator discusses the changes he sees in his body, and his disdain for them. For example, “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair” and “I grow old… I grow old…”. This can be seen in American Beauty where Lester looks back on the body he had during his high school years and his 20’s with envy, and decides to get back in shape for Mena Suvari’s character. Both Lester and the unnamed narrator from Prufrock are both extremely sexually frustrated characters, and this leads both of them to look back on their life with disgust. This can be seen in Prufrock when he discusses the mermaids that he does not think will sing to him and the “Arms that are braceleted and white and bare” and this is seen in American Beauty with Lester’s desire for a 16 year old girl.

At the end of American Beauty Lester lies dying from a gunshot wound to the head and looks back on his life up to that point. Lester is overcome with happiness and says that his last moment felt like an eternity. As Lester is dying he goes back over all his favorite memories of his life, from his time as a child to even the things that depressed him throughout the movie, his suburban life with his wife and daughter. Lester looks back on his life and discovers that all the things he hated in his life were actually some of his best moments. However, in contrast, the unnamed narrator from Prufrock looks back on his life and all he sees is the worst parts of his life, and fails to see through them to the beauty that lies behind them. This pessimism throughout the entirety of Prufrock is in stark contrast to this final scene of bliss in American Beauty. Both American Beauty and Prufrock can be viewed as a critique of the times in which they are in. Prufrock was published in 1915, directly during the time of the first World War, while American Beauty takes place in present times. Prufrock can be seen as a rejection of the destruction during the war and the disillusionment people felt while trying to cope with it. While, American Beauty can be taken as a rejection of the modern urban sprawl and of suburbia and of this idea that because you have a family and a good job that that means you are happy.

 

T.S. Eliot’s characterization of Dante from the Inferno vs. Prufrock in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

            T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, has obvious connections to Dante Alighieri’s poem, the Inferno. This is seen all throughout Eliot’s poem as he uses the epitaph (from the Inferno) in the beginning to unify the text through diction, imagery, and context, bringing a deeper meaning to his poem. Prufrock represents and idealizes the character Dante in the Inferno, providing the readers with background and a different look on the characterization of Prufrock.

            Dante represents the antithesis of Prufrock as well as the ideal that he strives for throughout the poem. This is noted in several lines of the poem when he says, “Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse” (lines 45-48). Prufrock strives for and fails to achieve this heroic ideal that Dante represents in the poem, and it is found through the context of the epitaph. Prufrock has so little confidence in his words that he comforts himself with the thought that there is time “for a hundred visions and revisions” (line 48) before he must finish with the line. On another note, Prufrock’s serious apprehension and doubt in the poem is countered with the idea of Dante’s heroicism in descending to Hell. Prufrock takes the next step by even attempting to ask the overwhelming question, to become Dante or Hamlet, seeking and failing to become a hero in his own life. This is shown in line 111, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,” making the readers pathetically accept his notion of a change in character. Prufrock does not ask this question because he fears judgment and rejection, society has created this self-conscious that has deeply wounded and shaped who he has become. In the end of the poem, one reading is that Prufrock condemns himself to isolation and a worthless life; simliarily to Dante and his many trials to escape the nine circles of Hell, in the Inferno. There is another similarity between the epitaph and the poem itself. The epigraph makes a social statement about how modern life can isolate and destroy individual self-worth. Prufrock finds himself isolated at the end of the poem, and being criticized by society because of his age. The line, “I grow old…I grow old…” (line 120) is an example of Prufrocks blunt belief that there is a time and place for everyone and he has stepped beyond that line and is now just going to be doomed to isolation for the rest of his life on earth. He even states in the past tense, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each” (line 124), meaning that there was a time and place for him, but that time has fleeting before his eyes.

            Prufrock eventually crumbles from within, being crushed under the pressures of modern life. He shuts himself off from society and the woman that he loves, because of his fear and self-consciousness. This internal catastrophe, displayed in Prufrock’s character, describes the isolating and lonely nature of modern existence. The poem’s epigraph (from the Inferno) fuses all of these concepts and figures together, bringing the reader to a richer understanding of the poem, and also using images to describe Prufrock’s self-victimization and downfall to society’s pressures.