What does the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" mean?

T.S Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is very confusing and can intrepreted in many ways. In this poem the speaker have some sort of "overwhelming question" that he wants to ask a girl at a tea party. Many believe that this question is a marriage proposal.

I think it is a marriage proposal but at certain points in the poem it seems like the narrator does not want to be married, like he is being forced to ask this "overwhelming question". At

line 39 I think the speaker is looking into the future thinking he will regret his decision to ask the girl to marry him, he says "Do I dare?" and then continues on to say "with a bald spot in the middle of my hair". I think this line means that he is looking at himself as an old, balding man and he thinks he will regret marrying, or asking this girl to marry him.

While he is questioning his decision Prufrock then says "Do I dare?/ Disturb the universe?". This line also supports the idea that Prufrock is being forced into asking someone to marry him. After reading the poem i got the impression that the speaker is a younger man, so maybe his family is forcing him into marriage, or maybe both his family and the girls family have an agreement for the two of them to get married, so by not asking her he would be "disturb[ing] the universe".

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" can be looked at from many different perspectives. I think that the poem is about a man who is forced, or is feeling pressured, into asking a woman to marry him.

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