awakening

.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a poem which enters the dynamic consciousness of its title character, whose feelings, thoughts and emotions are displayed in a motley but organized sequence, as they ride the man's wavering mood. His is a mood wavering more often towards haplessness than fulfillment, because Prufrock is a man caught in a vicious cycle of introspection, journey, and retreat. More specifically, J. Alfred Prufrock, as developed by …

…can sense an idle calm, appearing irregularly out of the turmoil which is the man's consciousness. So the look into the mind of J. Alfred Prufrock comes to an end as he contemplates, "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each . . .I do not think that they will sing to me." (814). The passionate reader could almost hear along with these words and those few following them, the man's subsequent resignation, and surrender to haplessness.