In an article published in The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, John Hakac argues that the yellow fog in the first section of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a symbol for love itself, and therefore a significant driving force of the poem. Hakac writes that “subconsciously [Prufrock] associates that cat-fog’s provocative behavior with what he most desires: love… an animal, physical love” (52-53). This claim is supported by reading “Prufrock” with “an eye for detecting negative and positive values, it becomes apparent from a psychological viewpoint that the yellow fog passage… is the only section of the poem which is organically complete and which ends on a note of positive satisfaction” (52). Prufrock’s spirits are perhaps in their best condition during the section, and he reacts favorably to the fog, entering “into a good mood for the observation, detached from himself and almost objective about what he sees, objective in the sense that none of the timidity and anxiety incipient in his opening sally… is present here” (52).
Hakac argues there are several different components of the fog, the first being “a veiled expression of graceful love-making” (53). Its location in the poem is sandwiched by references to elusive women, establishing “specifically for the first time in the poem what was latent in the earlier mention of women: they are distant and elusive for Prufrock” (53). This suggests that not only is love distant for Prufrock, but sex as well.
Hakac continues that by symbolizing happy love, the fog is “the revealing clue, visibly suspended, of what is missing in Prufrock, serving the reader as an ironic reminder of good love as he struggles sympathetically to understand the long and obscure revelation of Prufrock’s tortured incapacity for such good love which follows to the end” (53).
The final scene of the poem, set against a lush, dreamlike and romantic atmosphere of mermaids is a final chance for Prufrock to act upon his desire. But this last opportunity slips through his fingers, and he realizes that both real, earthy love and an idealized love are beyond his grasp. Hakac believes that “Eliot seems to have provided these subtle, widely spaced contrasting motifs of real love and ideal love as impossibilities in order to intensify Prufrock’s agony of no-love. They demonstrate full circle the fact that Prufrock’s severe debilitation of love through timidity and a self-acknowledged fear is really tragic. He cannot free himself, even under the goading threat of precious time, to take one of man’s sublime gables of striving to impose upon the vast chaos of existence the order of a personal love in a small, coherent world of his own creation” (54).
In conclusion, Hakac suggests that symbolizing the yellow fog as love “clarifies and intensifies the theme of Prufrock’s failure” (54).
Hakac, John. “The Yellow Fog of “Prufrock”” The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 26.2 (1972):52-54. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
Great summary of this article, which itself is a really interesting close-reading of the fog motif in Eliot’s poem. It does seem that a poem in which so much in the world and in the poet’s mind is unraveling, there needs to be a core or center that allows us to see how far our hero has fallen–how far he is from realizing love in reality or in the ideal.
You do a great job of introducing and summarizing the article, but in future critical posts, I would encourage you to add to your own voice in the post by responding a bit to what you’re reading–engaging and extending the author’s argument where necessary. Also, use the link feature to embed a link to the article rather than including the whole URL.