Time and the Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock Pericles once said “Be governed by time, the wisest advisor of all. » This ruler of the past may not have had the technology of today, but he did not need it to recognize the dominating nature of time over all humanity. No matter how much progress man makes, he will never be able to slow down time or stop it completely; nor does he seem capable of jumping into the past or the future. Time is something that man cannot manipulate, but it manipulates man. No poem illustrates this point better than TS Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Prufrock is trapped by the conundrum of time to the extent that no matter what he does, he always regresses back to where he started. His life is reduced to a diurnal cycle of monotonous tasks that seem dictated by time. Prufrock's "decisions and revisions" are tedious and monotonous; in a sense, he has no free will. His lack of self-control is clearly visible in his circular journey throughout the poem: he begins his journey conforming to time, makes a meager attempt to disrupt the invariability of everyday life, and finds himself once again hopelessly bound by time to its usual behavior. trends. In this poem, time takes on a distinct meaning. Rather than simply being an external object with no control over man, Eliot elevates the meaning of this foreign object to a new level. The time given to the speaker can be equated to his actions. Each day he has a certain amount of time, and day after day he is ready to “spit the end of [his] ways” (Eliot 2461) at the end of his sweet day. The frustration that Prufrock accumulates is caused by the tedious repetition of his actions. Moreover, he feels like he can't escape middle of paper......daily rule: we can't control time. No matter how much technology humanity has, it is unlikely that we will ever reach a point in history where time no longer limits us in some way. The importance of this fact lies in its acceptance by man. Once we are able to understand our domination of time, we will be able to live in harmony with it, using all of this precious quantity granted to us. Works Cited Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Mr. H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 1996. 2459-2463. Pinion, FB A TS Eliot Companion. Totowa: Barnes & Noble Books, 1986. Sharma, Jitendra Kumar. Time & TS Eliot: his poetry, his plays and his philosophy. New York: Apt Books, INC. 1985. Spurr, David. Conflicts of conscience: poetry and criticism of TS Eliot. Urbana: U of Illinois P. 1984.