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His “love song” to himself is a cry of anguish…” (Mayer 128-129) While Prufrock sings to himself, men everywhere are busy talking outlook to the stars, the sky, and the moon about how much they wish they could get the girl they loved or be more handsome, more intelligent, or more loved. The mermaids will not sing to Prufrock because he will not sing to anyone. “Prufrock is inhibited, self-conscious, obsessed with image, self-possessed, and afraid… Fear is in the way – the fear to dare, to live honestly, to tell all, to be the Fool. Eliot uses Prufrock as a symbol for all men again. They love someone, but they hold themselves back because of some fear, etc. “‘Prufrock’ is built around the arid, timid, conventional persona of a man sexual enough to admit desire, but insufficiently sexual to do anything about it.” (Raffel 24) In every person’s life they feel like this occasionally. His inhibitions about the opposite sex hold him back.
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“I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” (Line 120-121) Prufrock loses the future by concentrating on the present. “He is Eliot’s archetype of the great refusal, the man who fears to dare and so misses life… …Prufrock initiates Eliot’s obsession with the lost opportunity and the missed life.” (Mayer 127) Prufrock is so busy concentrating on his less-than-perfect features and supposed negative attributes that he lets life pass him by. Prufrock’s worries concerning his sexuality and appearance not only show his resemblance to all men, but they also stop him from continuing on with his life as a happy, caring, and normal man. This is Eliot’s generalization of all men. Whether you are 17, 37, or 57, you are capable of having no confidence occasionally.
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Eliot is showing that all men (women included) have doubts and occasional low self-esteem. Prufrock has characteristics of several different people of all ages. They go out and try to reinvent themselves as different people just as Prufrock does with his revisions, decisions, and visions. They worry about their hair balding or becoming gray and whether they are attractive enough.
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However, not only does Prufrock resemble teenagers, but he also resembles middle-aged men who are hitting a mid-life crisis. While Prufrock is worrying “with a bald spot in the middle of his hair – (How they will say his hair is growing thin!)” (lines 41-42), teenagers constantly, in vain, check their own hair in the mirror to see if it is just perfect! There are several similarities between young people like teenagers and Prufrock. Both seem to put facades on to make themselves sound better so that they will get the person they want to get. While Prufrock is busy finding time “for a hundred indecisions, and a hundred visions and revision” (lines 32-33), teenagers are occupied thinking of ways to approach the person they want. Both are in love with some beautiful woman and wander the paths practically drooling. While Prufrock is “like a patient etherized upon a table” (line 3), teenagers roam the halls at school like puppy dogs with their mouths open, dazed and lost in space. If one looks at Prufrock through the eyes of a teenager, he can easily be seen as a seventeen-year-old. (Spender 31) Therefore, he can be portrayed as a teenager, a middle-aged man, or a person of any other age very easily. Eliot uses Prufrock as a symbol, for humanity in general, to show how all persons are doubtful at times of their attractiveness. In the poem, Prufrock recites a long monologue that is characteristic of almost every other human being. The man has no self-esteem and therefore constantly dwells on his negative attributes and less-than-perfect features. Alfred Prufrock, breathes in his surroundings and then uses them to define his own appearance as the antithesis of what he sees. Alfred Prufrock”, a man confronts his physical sexuality during an elite social gathering.