The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Literary Devices

Tone

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Literary Devices Tone

The tone of “Prufrock” is profoundly alienated, which is a term that refers to feelings of isolation and estrangement. The sense of alienation is certainly thematic in “Prufrock.” Not only is the speaker isolated in his thoughts, but images of estrangement come up constantly in the poem, particularly in relation to women. Consider the famous refrain in lines 13–14 and 35–36:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The speaker depicts the women as remote, going about other business and talking about other things. Similarly, Prufrock references a woman whom he’s misunderstood completely (lines 97–98 and 109–110), as well as mermaids who “will [not] sing to me” (line 125). But in addition to these examples of the speaker’s feelings of alienation, Eliot also references alienation through the poem’s fractured structure. The speaker’s thoughts pass rapidly through images and impressions that are merely juxtaposed with no obvious connections between them. Likewise, Eliot employs fragments of sonnets and other traditional poetic forms, at once gesturing to the ideal of a refined whole and thwarting it. The impossibility of formal integration marks the poem’s most profound expression of alienation.