T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1919)

The speaker in Eliot's poem is a man who walks down a street and contemplates life, much like anyone does lost in their thoughts. His thoughts and visions are made of aging and inaction. His first image is of the eveing when he states "you and I" should go out when "When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table." This image evokes helplessness. A patient is given drugs and anesthesia and laid out however the doctors need him to be displayed on the operating table. When a person is out, he has no idea what is happening to him. Hours and days can go buy and the patient will have no recollection of what happened to him. He then describes this yellow fog as though it were a cat rubbing itself against the city. He talks about how he will have a bald spot on his head and his limbs will be weak and thin. He then contemplates people talking about him. It seems as though he regrets much in his life. Like Hamlet his greatest flaw is the inability to act. He cannot approach women so he is alone. As one gets older they can look at the future and death is closer everyday. A person can also look back at the good and bad memories and can recall the mistakes he made and regrets of lost time.