J. Alfred Prufrock and Peter Walsh: A Close Study

The twentieth century saw the rise of the anti-hero in Western literature. The protagonist was no longer a demi-god battling fearsome creatures or warriors. Instead, he was an Everyman struggling against his own mediocrity and imperfections, treading water against a rising tide of alienation.

This kind of anti-hero is portrayed especially vividly in two landmark works: T.S. Elliot's poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Elliot's eponymous protagonist, J. Alfred Prufrock, and Woolf's Peter Walsh share many aspects in their struggles to find meaning in their conventional lives against growing fears of loneliness and disconnect. Both rue signs of age and decreased virility: "How his hair is growing thin!" (Elliot, line 41) Prufrock imagines the women will say as they scrutinize his bald spot. Peter Walsh fights back terror by telling himself he is not "old, or set, or dried in the least" (Woolf, 50), but when Walsh tries to march alongside a troop of young soldiers, he is left in the dust.

Both are plagued with a sense of their own mediocrity, or as Prufrock puts it, he is not Prince Hamlet, but the Fool. Walsh is even more blunt, calling himself a failure outright. Their views of themselves contrast with the beautiful, successful women they see around them - who are always out of reach.

Prufrock and Walsh pursue love as an answer to their isolation, but they are emotionally impotent and all their efforts are frustrated. Prufrock passes cheap hotels and restaurants strewn with aphrodisiacal oyster shells, but neither partakes in the festivities nor talks to the women he sees. He's intimidated by these polished women who talk of Michelangelo, the sculptor of the ideal man. He has "heard the mermaids singing" (Elliot, line 124), but he knows they do not sing for him. The singing beauties - reminiscent of the mythical Sirens who lure sailors toward treacherous rocks with their song - suggest Prufrock's acute awareness of his insufficiency to achieve his desires.

Walsh, too, sees the woman he desires, Clarissa Dalloway, as a mythical Siren of sorts, describing her as wearing a green "mermaid dress" (Woolf, 174). Clarissa refused him years ago, and he has convinced himself he is no longer in love, yet, "Clarissa had sapped something in him permanently" (159). He seems to have lost the ability to pursue a healthy relationship, instead bouncing into impulsive, ill-advised romances, the latest with a married woman in India. For Prufrock and Walsh, the biggest indicator of their alienation is their inability to express themselves when it comes to something important, or the "overwhelming question" (Elliot, line 10).

With the repetition of "That is not what I meant at all" (line 97), Prufrock shows his inability to communicate his deepest wishes and fears. Walsh also has trouble putting his emotions into words. When he has an epiphany about his feelings toward Clarissa, all he can say is, "The death of the soul" (58).

This incapacity to communicate and create meaningful social bonds isolates Prufrock and Walsh, revealing an alienation indicative of the modern era.

Works Cited

Elliot, T.S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Bartleby.com. 1917.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1925.