Prufrock by TS EliotThe ironic character of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", one of the first poems by TS Eliot (1888-1965) in the form of a dramatic monologue, it is introduced in the title. Eliot speaks, through his speaker, of the absence of love, and the poem, far from being a "song", is a meditation on the failure of romance. The initial image of the evening (traditionally the time of love) is disturbing, rather than consoling or seductive, and the evening "becomes patient" (Spender 160): "When the evening stretches against the sky / Like an ethereal patient above a table" (2-3). According to Berryman, the modern poem begins with this line (197). The urban setting of the poem is conflicting rather than enticing. a seedy neighborhood of cheap hotels and restaurants, where Prufrock lives in lonely darkness" (Harlan 265). Prufrock's experience is contrasted with that of nameless "women" (13), who collectively represent the female gender. The their unattainable status is represented by their constant movement – ​​“they come and go” – and their “polite chatter about Michelangelo, who was a man of great creative energy, unlike Prufrock” (Harlan 265). any Prufrock love song, just as they wouldn't find his name or persona attractive. "A man named J. Alfred Prufrock can hardly be expected to sing a love song; he seems too well dressed" (Berryman 197). "J. Alfred Prufrock" indicates his formality, and his surname, in particular, indicates prudery. The powerful metaphor, a visual image of the "yellow fog" (15) in the fourth stanza, represents the jaundiced environment of the modern city, or Eliot's "hellish version of the forest of Arden" (Stag 227). The image is ambiguous, however, because Eliot also makes it curiously attractive in the precision with which he compares the movements of the fog to those of a cat that "licked its tongue in the corners of the evening" (17). We also feel the fog, disturbing, in that image, in the onomatopoeia of "licked". The repetition of "time", in the next stanza, shows how Prufrock's world of being is tied to temporality. “Prufrock speaks to his listeners as if they have come to visit him in some unchanging circle of hell where time has stood still and all action has become theoretical” (Miller 183). “Time” is repeated several times, but Eliot not only emphasizes its inevitable presence, but also the banality of the ways in which we use it; "having toast and tea" (34).