From the Italian epigraph of the poem there is the suggestion that an arcane knowledge is being sought after and possibly revealed.  But only in the likelihood that the truth will remain buried, that we, the readers may not take it out of the poem with us.

Thus as the poem begins we wend our way through the maze of streets in Eliot's urban chaos, invited by the poet narrator who exhorts us, "Let us go then, you and I," the only example of functional intimacy or relationship in the poem, even though it is presented to us as a "love song."  There we are, navigating those early lines, drifting from one scene to the next, and one thought to the next, searching for purpose, hungering for some kind of meaning and drawing back inevitably from significance, just as the narrator penetrates the streets only to discover that the way is obscured, as the fog slinks along personified as a liquid, feline presence.

Our role, as the very first lines suggest is diagnostic.  We are to examine the evening, "spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table," and perhaps try to discover just what it is suffering from.

The poem works on the principle of stream of consciousness.  The words reveal a dramatic interior monologue of anxiety, depression and fear.  But what is it that is so disturbing Prufrock?  Growing old!  "I grow old     . . .I grow old . . ./I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled," Prufrock cries in the voice of the Fool: an antic figure,  who traditionally is allowed to speak the truth in some Shakespearean drama just so long as none of the characters admit to listening to him (compare to the quotation from Dante at the beginning of the poem).

The nature of Prufrock's truth is similar to that of many of the poets we have already looked at.  His quest is a metaphysical one, or an existential one.  He wants to find some kind of meaning, abstract and outside himself to give shape and purpose to a life largely wasted; a life measured by trivialities, like coffee spoons or cigarettes, a life, perhaps not unlike our own.  There are telling uses of synecdoche throughout the poem, most graphically, perhaps in casual asides like "I should have been a pair of claws," where Prufrock´s failure to seize the day haunts him in later years.

Read the poem aloud and enjoy its rich images and sonorous language.  Then go in search of Eliot on the web.  As you will soon discover he is one of the most discussed poets of the twentieth-century, and one upon whom much critical attention has been focused