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T.S. Eliot as “Prufrock”
Fascinating Mini-Biography of Eliot’s Early Life:
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Thomas Sterns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888.
He died in 1965 in Kensington, London and is buried in East
Coker, England (a tiny town where his ancestors are from)
o He attended Harvard University, but he didn’t like it.
 In response to the Industrial Revolution and the
Progressive Era, universities in the United States were changing their curriculum, to
encourage study of physics, math and chemistry.
 Eliot found that there was “not one older poet writing in American whose writing a
younger man could take seriously.”
 After graduation in 1910, Eliot enrolled in a philosophy graduate program and
studied abroad in Europe for a short time (France, Germany, etc).
o When he returned to the states, he met and fell in love with the daughter of a minister,
Emily Hale (1912-1914).
 The two exchanged “friendly” letters, which have been kept secret for decades.
They are currently being held at Princeton and scheduled for release to the public in
2020
 Eliot moved to England in 1914
o In June 1915, he decided to stay in England permanently, marrying a woman he’d just met:
Vivienne Haigh-Wood!
 Vivienne ended up being a classic “femme fatal” and muse for many of Eliot’s
poems (most notably, the most complex and depressing poem in the English
language, The Waste Land, published in 1922).
 Shortly into their marriage, she literally began going crazy (she ultimately had to be
committed in an asylum) and cheated on Eliot with famous philosopher Bertrand
Russell
o In 1927, Eliot officially became a British citizen
Eliot’s Real-Life Connection to “Prufrock”:
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He wrote it between October 1910 and November 1911, mostly composed in Munich, Germany
It reveals Eliot’s emerging prophetic social criticism as well as a sense of isolation and alienation as
an American in a foreign land.
Prufrock is a male speaker who is uncertain and diffident when in the presence of a woman.
o He is introspective—the poem is all about the internal monologue
o He fails to “disturb the universe” (line 46), and though he reassures himself through the
repetition of the line “there will be time” (line 41), so much time has already passed that
there is a “bald spot” in the middle of his hair and “his arms and legs are thin” (lines 40, 44).
Prufrock’s preoccupation with how the world views him seems to be the source of his hindrance; he
keeps referring to what “they will say” (lines 41, 44), and consequently, he finds himself too afraid to
“dare.” He states: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker” (line 84). Though the poem
concludes with a heroic couplet, ironically the final two words are “we drown.”
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This characterization of a timorous, prosaic man reflects Eliot in many ways.
o 1) Contemplative Prufrock resembles Eliot, who has been described many times by those
who knew him as a pensive man.
o 2) Eliot feared that he, too, might miss the moment of his greatness. The final two words,
“we drown,” evoke an image of failure by suffocation, which Eliot metaphorically felt in
Harvard and with his family.
o 3) Ultimately, Prufrock’s fear of rejection and self-induced alienation keep him from
reaching his prophetic potential, which perhaps connects to Eliot’s fear of failure and
isolation while he was abroad.
Fear of Sex:
o In the beginning of Prufrock, the speaker describes the slums of a random city, and along the
street are “restless nights in one-night cheap hotels” (line 6), giving off an image of onenight stands and cheap prostitution. Such debauchery is unappealing and “insidious” to
Prufrock as it was to Eliot (line 9); however, it opens the door to the poem’s pervasive sexual
imagery that suggests a fear of sex.
o “I have known them all already,” but he wonders if he could go through with the act of sex.
He asks, “Should I, after tea and cakes and ices/ Have the strength to force the moment to
its crisis?” (lines 79, 80).
o He doesn’t go through with it. The poem concludes with the bittersweet image of the
singing mermaids beneath the ocean and Prufrock lamenting “I do not think that they will
sing to me” (line 125). Thus, throughout the poem, Prufrock encompasses Eliot’s sexual
apprehensions as he travels to a big city—invoking both fears that he will fail as a lover and
that he might not be courageous enough to even pursue a partner.
These sexual implications found in Eliot’s early poetry, in conjunction with his narrative style and
timid-male characterization, reflect the effects of his journey abroad in 1910-1911.
o Eliot was in the midst of his own crisis-- an American student who longed become a
European poet with an uncertain future of romance with two different ladies.
Other Great Works by Eliot:
The Waste Land (1922)- difficult to understand, filled with allusions, structurally complex.
Famous line: “April is the cruelest month.”
The Hollow Men (1925)- In response to desolation post WWI.
Famous Lines: “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)- One of Eliot’s many successful plays, set in Canterbury, England.
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939)- A book of “light verse.” Inspired the musical “Cats” that has
been on Broadway since 1981!
Four Quartets (1936-1942)- Considered his masterpiece for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Famous Line: “In my end is my beginning.”