This poem is considered to be one of the first modernist poems. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a short, moody, repetitious monologue of the thoughts of a man who searches for love and meaning amongst an uncertain twilight world. Eliot's piece captures a changing society and consciousness perfectly, with WWI occurring in the near future and the struggle for leadership, causing the ways people lived to be altered, as well as, their thoughts and what they loved. J. Alfred Prufrock is the protagonist in this piece, who has witnessed the seedier and darker side of life. Lonely and loveless, he knows that he is ageing and measures his life in coffee spoons while his hair turns thin. He desires a fresh start, but throughout the piece he encounters a problem, he does not know where to begin.

In Patricia Park's Re Jane, the author includes two lines from Eliot's poem on page 131, Part II of her work. Those lines state, "There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"(lines 26-27). These two lines from Eliot's piece serve to mark the beginning of a change in scenery for the character Jane, as she will know be in a new setting in Seoul, South Korea, where just like J. Alfred Prufrock, she is looking for a fresh start from her previous life in New York. The lines also serve to foreshadow the unfortunate reality that Jane will have to prepare a face when meeting these new faces in order to assimilate to this new society. 'Prepare a face' has a double meaning, as it can mean to literally cover up one's face with makeup, or to hide how you truly feel from others by figuratively 'putting on a mask' to cover how one feels about living in a new environment. For Jane she will do both as the work continues in order to meet the societal standards of beauty in Seoul, by preparing her face, so it looks presentable to those around her and to cover her thoughts and feelings about living in a country that in some aspects is so foreign compared to the United States, where she grew up.

Bibliography

Park, Patricia. Re Jane. Penguin Books, 2015.

Information Source: Spacey, Andrew. " Analysis of Poem: 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T.S. Eliot ."owlcation.com. Owlcation, 3 Oct. 2019. Date Accessed, 7 Nov. 2019, https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-The-Love-Song-of-J-Alfred-Prufrock-by-TS-Eliot

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