However, we do not learn what this ‘overwhelming’ question is in stanza two: ‘Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”/ Let us go and make our visit.’ This provokes the reader’s curiosity as well as the expectation that the question will be revealed in due course.
STANZAS 3 AND 6
Stanzas three and six comprise a thought-provoking rhyming couplet, with an allusion to Michelangelo, the illustrious Italian painter and sculptor: ‘In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo’. This poem does not follow a regular which it appears. We could interpret this mock-heroic couplet as Prufrock comparing himself unfavourably with a genius like Michelangelo, as he does with Hamlet later on. Or perhaps it is the subjects of Michelangelo’s art that he feels inferior to, such as the beautiful marble sculpture of David. Is there also a suggestion that the women discussing Michelangelo are merely name-dropping an icon? Perhaps they have just visited Italy and are simply having a cultured conversation. Nonetheless, the fact that
STANZA 4
are seen in the speaker’s evocative description of a foggy October evening in London. The yellow fog and smoke are given feline characteristics and described so sensuously that we can almost picture them rubbing their ‘back[s]’ or ‘muzzle[s] on the window- panes’ and licking their tongues ‘into the corners of the evening’. The verbs ‘Lingered’, ‘Slipped’, ‘leap’ and ‘Curled’ can also be associated with cats. The last two lines of the stanza recall a cat circling its chosen spot before instantly falling asleep: ‘And seeing that it was a soft October night,/ Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.’
STANZA 5
The repetition of the phrase ‘there will be time’, both in this stanza and throughout many, but perhaps to the upper-class and wealthy Prufrock, who probably doesn’t