Coffee Spoons and Mermaids

On first look, (and the second too, I'd wager) the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is an enigma. What does yellow smoke, arms with shawls, and mermaids have to do with a love song? What's so romantic about the smog, coffee spoons, or drowning? I don't have the be-all-end-all answer, but I've got a few thoughts and I'd love to hear yours, too.

One of the common themes to notice in Prufrock is the solitary narration with brief mentions of what is taking place in the present. While it seems that Prufrock is at a party, he's less concerned with describing the people around him as he is focusing on one aspect (eyes, arms, etc.) and more focused on how to enter a conversation.

I think we all can relate with Prufrock somehow. Even the extroverts among us may have experienced shyness at one point or another, a situation where we felt uncomfortable, a party where we didn't know who to talk to or how to introduce ourselves. Still, contemplation to this degree seems distant and foreign to us. We don't have yellow smog in our streets, polite visits with coffee spoons and niceties, or recitations of Hamlet's soliloquy mixed with Lear's Fool running around our heads. Or do we?

But I digress. If we establish that Prufrock is at a dinner party, it also seems that he is familiar with these women and guests and knows the etiquette and he doesn't like it. There's a sense of wanting more from life than just walking around a room, smiling and chatting about Italian art. Even deeper, there's this desire for just one woman and nature's beauty, away from the crowds and simply being together, appreciating the good things in life apart from society and expectations.

If this seems like a stretch, consider how uncomfortable he feels at the party.

“...descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—”

and

“Do I dare / Disturb the universe?”

And these women, with their critical stares and gossiping lips make him feel like an insect “pinned and wriggling on the wall” or wishing he was “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” He is afraid of Heaven, of falling short, of being told he's wrong.

So how is this all a love song? It seems rather easy to determine for me. Prufrock is a man who is tired of the run around required for wooing a woman. He's much too self-conscious to approach any of them, and when he tries, he's met with piercing stares or placating comments. The time of day doesn't matter – morning, afternoon, or evening – because he'd rather be out in nature with a woman who can appreciate the night sky, the beach, and his company. He wants to grow old with a woman by his side, not still trying to look young and woo some woman that will laugh at him or contradict him.

In the end, however, he still feels like living in his fantasy where mermaids call his name and draw him to their kingdom – and humans bring him back to the present. He then drowns at the realization that his dream is not reality, mermaids are not singing to him, and he is alone in the fantasy.

While it's a rather morose and disheartening interpretation and ending note, I think that Eliot didn't set out to write a happy poem. This love song is not spoken aloud – in fact, Prufrock seems too afraid to speak at all – and the inward world must always give way to the way things really are.