What Prufrock understands in this marvelous stanza is that Death is what really causes the despair and meaninglessness. All those references to John the Baptist refer to his vision of himself on the stairs and more. How could anyone love a young man going bald who looks like Prufrock, who has no real social and economic prospects? He is no prophet. In other words after the opportunity has passed, he acknowledges that he could not foresee the moment before the lovely woman, and he tries to diminish the importance of the moment: "and here's no great matter;/I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,/And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,/and in short, I was afraid."
Death here reminds me of the Emily Dickenson poem, "Because I could not stop for death/he kindly stopped for me." Emily seems to be seeking, in her imagination, a meaningful relationship with Death as a courtly lover, with the carriage ride, the courting gentleman, etc. She is touched by the same existential problem that Prufrock has, i.e., the lack of meaning in her life. Prufrock has missed his opportunity but gets to the heart of the existential problem. We are all going to die. Does death thereby render life meaningless? Are all our hopes and desires and values simply negated, rendered meaningless by the fact of our impending deaths? It is certainly a cause for fear, and yet Prufrock here finds death snickering, revealing that Prufrock is essentially a silly, foolish character; yet Prufrock acknowledges his cowardly nature, faces it, and turns to the real issue: "And would it have been worth it, after all?" I suspect that instead of a bank teller, Prufrock was really a high school English teacher, for he makes wonderful use of the Andrew Marvell poem to focus again the contrasting heroic Renaissance world of brave lovers over against his own cultural construct of terrified, weak aging men. The new question is, would it have been worth while to have reached out to her only to have her say flatly, No! She seemed lovely and inviting, but what if he misunderstood her meaning and she rejected him finally and emphatically: "That is not what I meant at all! You have misunderstood me."
I think the reason Prufrock needs two stanzas to articulate the problem is that his intellect is trying to define the problem and truly can't do it properly and clearly, for it is only with the lines: "It is impossible to say just what I mean! [apparently, because the 'reason' comes from the heart, the emotions]/But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while/If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,/And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all,/That is not what I meant at all." In other words, what if he misunderstood her gesture, the beckoning beauty. What if he had moved and had gotten it horribly wrong. It is the nerves that resolve the I's inability to articulate clearly the problem because it is the heart that would be truly betrayed. Having gotten the issue clarified for himself, the insight forces him to a new realization about himself: he sees who and what he truly is and he faces that knowledge straightforwardly, so to speak.
[However, my body, like my machine, is running out of steam. Therefore, I shall pause before I deal with final four stanzas of the poem, and try to do them some justice. The image that went with the last entry is an image of a sea girl from a statue that I bought years ago. The statue is of an undersea scene with two bronze girls, hair flowing, caused by the water, and both women are kind of supporting a large crystal, ball or globe full of bubbles. I bought it at a store in Lexington Green years ago. The store was at the entrance on the left to the hallway that led down to Joseph Beth's Bookstore. The statuette satisfies many of my romantic longings, for a moment or two. It also collects dust that effectively puts those romantic longings into proper perspective. And yet, I like it much. I'll try for a better image of it.]
Next day, Sunday the fifth. Prufrock's moment of recognition begins with the line: "No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;/Am an attendant lord, one that will do/to swell a progress, start a scene or two,/Advise the prince: no doubt, an easy tool,/Deferential, glad to be of use,/Politic, cautious, and meticulous;/Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;/At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--/Almost, at times, the Fool." [He may belong in the current president's staff. It sounds as though he would fit right in.]
From what we have read and experienced in the preceding lines, we can see that Prufrock has nailed the character, though unlike Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Prufrock is telling the truth about himself, accurately, as he perceives it. The most important element is his poetic movement (with the Shakespearean iambic pentameter verse, except for the first and last lines), leading to his assertion or discovery that his real role is Fool, capital "Fool." Attendant lord, perhaps, but Fool finally and truly. The Shakespearean Fool is a prophet of sorts, but definitely one who has the license to tell truth to power, that is, I think, in the poem, truth to the controlling I/eye. The Fool sees, intuitively, in Shakespeare, the folly of the ruling king, Lear, for example, and speaks it. As with the magic lantern earlier, the lovely lyrical insight of the final lines comes not from reason, but from the intuitive heart where real meaning resides. And as with the earlier sections of the monologue, Prufrock proceeds with several questions. First, the lyric: "I grow old...I grow old.../I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled./Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?/I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach./I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me./I have seen them riding seaward on the waves/Combing the white hair of the waves blown back/When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/till human voices wake us, and we drown."
Now, I think the best reading of Prufrock's experience will attempt to see how the final lines relate back to that which has gone before, particularly the house and the room where Prufrock met the woman and experienced his life-changing moment. [Earlier today I walked Simon for two miles on the Stephenson Trail, and now I have a great urge to grasp little Simon, haul him back to the bedroom, and take a long restful nap. Suspiró! This point in these notes is like the final quarter mile on the trail. Exhausting but unavoidable. Walk on little fellow. The truth is I am never sure that I have really gotten the meaning right, and I do so love getting meanings right. Ah, well.]. I think the key is correct, but first, I do not think Prufrock is about to drown himself and resolve his dilemma by taking his life. Hamlet didn't, Prufrock doesn't. The first part of the lyric uses the future tense. I think the drowning is metaphorical and metaphysical.
In the first four lines Prufrock is suggesting future acts. He is growing old, the time to act is now. He seems to be asserting a form of dress that contrasts with the earlier necktie and pin. The fussy, stuffie, meticulous man is talking about adopting the current avant-garde style, wearing cuffed pants perhaps, thus fitting in with the cast and characters of Gatsby's parties from the same time period. I seem to remember seeing Gatsby in white flannel trousers in the movie, of course. The new hair style might cover up the thinning hair; eating a juicy peach would contrast with the dainty "tea and cakes and ices." I eat ripe juicy peaches like that over our sink with three paper towels close by. And then we get to the women: mermaids? First, I remember a Donne poem, I think, where the lover names hearing mermaids singing as an impossible thing should he find a true and constant woman. The impossible, however, has happened to Prufrock. A miracle has occurred, so to speak. He has heard the mermaids singing, but not to him and he does not think that they will sing to him; and yet he has seen them "riding seaward on the waves..." a lovely, aesthetically stimulating image. These images, I think, suggest the details of the image belonging to the woman in the room that distracted him, that presented something new that he hadn't known before: "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare/(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)". The fantasy images have the same aesthetic pull that these lines have. The woman/ mermaids are lovely and desirable (like the two women of my statuette. And yet, there is no love relationship possible with a mermaid as there might have been with the woman in the room. Mermaids are creatures of the imagination, and lovely as those images are, they aren't real, as the woman at the house is.
The final three lines are Prufrock's ultimate insight and revelation: they define where he was, "We (the you and I) have lingered in the chambers of the sea (the room in the house)/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Till [the crucial line or image] human voices wake us, and we drown." These lines take us back to the etherized patient of the opening lines, then to the women in the house, then to here, on the beach. The water image and the drowning suggest that the really real, the reality of human love, was present and possible all along, but that Prufrock is not equipped to survive in it. In effect both "you and I" experience the reality of love in the human voices and the presence of water, but they (Prufrock) are not capable of acting there; being awake is being aware of the nature of the reality where or in which one exists, and in a sense, discovering there real presence.
Maybe. I think I'm on the right track and I love the poem; the more I read it the more I seem to see, and I know that Prufrock (and we) get somewhere worth getting to in the course of experiencing the poem.