Answer to Question 1
- Part one: Prufrock prepares to try to ask the overwhelming question. Then in lines 8486 we learn that he has failed to ask it. In 87110 he tries to justify himself for chickening out. From 111 to the end he sums up his static present and hollow future.
A few other points worth making:
That Eliot may have taken the bones of his plot from Henry Jamess Crapy Cornelia (1909) is Grover Smiths convincing theory. This is the story of WhiteMason, a middle-aged bachelor of nostalgic temperament, who visits a young Mrs.
Answer to Question 2
- Some possibilities: Prufrock and the woman he is attending. Prufrock and the reader. Prufrock and Prufrockhes talking to himself, you being the repressive self, I being the timid or repressed self. Prufrock and the other eggheads of the Western worldin this view, the poem is Eliots satire on the intelligentsia.
