A Journey

I did not think the journey had an actual destination. The journey that Prufrock referred to was not a physical journey, but more of a tour of his inner thoughts. He lets the reader in on his inner thoughts and troubles.

The poem does not follow the model of a usual storyline. The narrator started off unhappy and ended unhappy. The problem was there from the beginning but did not get solved in the end. There was no loss, but no gain either. The narrator broods over the same issue, but cannot find a way to solve it. The journey did not take the reader anywhere but gets the reader involved with the narrator’s way of thought. The way the poem was written is similar to a stream of thought. The subject jumps from one topic to another between stanzas. Prufrock talks about his inner thought and feelings in the first stanza and then in the second, makes a observation about his surroundings (“In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo”) then back to his own thoughts. In the very last line, “Till human voices wake us, and we drown”, can be thought of as a pull back to reality. At could be interpreted as human voices distracts Prufrock from his deep thoughts and drags him back to reality.