We are given a brief feeling of hope with the carefree image of Prufrock walking on a beach in white trousers –  beach’ – and the magical reference to mermaids – ‘I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each’ – but our hopes for him are dashed in stanza 19 when he admits that the mermaids (a symbol of beauty, truth, art, mythology and inspiration) will never speak or sing to him: ‘I do not think that they will sing to me.’ The simplicity of this statement makes it all the more devastating. Sometimes sirens (mythological sea creatures who appear beautiful and charm men with their song, only to lure them to their deaths) are represented as mermaids, and mermaids as sirens. This makes us wonder why they do not then sing to Prufrock. Is he not even worthy of being destroyed by them? And as they are female creatures, is this Prufrock’s way of explaining how invisible he feels to women?


STANZA 20


The penultimate stanza contains what is arguably the most beautiful of Eliot’s images, with Prufrock describing the mermaids he has seen in the distance: ‘I have seen them riding seaward on the waves/ Combing the white hair of the waves blown back/ When the wind blows the water white and black.’ The gorgeous wordplay of the mermaids ‘Combing’ the foam or ‘white hair’ creates a charming picture that we must re-assess when we read the 


STANZA 21


 of the beautiful mermaids dressed in seaweed: ‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/ By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/ Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’ The fantasy cannot be sustained in the real world, as the voices of humans wake him up and drown him. There are multiple ways of interpreting the closing lines. For example, if the mermaids are supposed to be sirens, then their song has been an enchanting illusion to lure him to his death. This would mean they did, in fact, sing to him in the end and killed him as a result. This ambiguity is one of the many reasons why ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ is a poem that stays with its readers.


LEAVING CERTIFICATE HIGHER LEVEL


143


T. S. Eliot


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