Sadness, courtesy of Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock written by T.S Eliot is a timeless poem that looks at a middle-aged man who struggles to get over his fears of people and interaction, in turn huddling his emotions in and holding them tight. From the poem we can see that he clearly has deep, detailed issues he deals with like his low self esteem and terrible people skills but at end of the day, Prufrock is still human, and all humans have problems. He takes his true feelings and intentions and bottles it up, never to be opened for anyone but himself. While it is easy to be critical about Prufrock's lack of effort or drive, the reasons he keeps in his head are thoughts that can be explored in many other excellent pieces of writing.

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“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock....(Abridged).” Thus I Wrote, 21 Jan. 2015, thusiwrote.com/2015/01/21/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock-abridged/.

Araby by James Joyce, a story I've talked about in a previous post, can be used as a foundation for the reasons some text can be related to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Araby explained a story of a boy who couldn't confess his love to a woman clearly unfit for him, so it makes him look inwards and causes a sort of self hatred. Prufrock holds some self resentment within him, as he does recognize the only person who isn't making things work is himself. The boy in Araby gets angry because he realizes how things in life work and where his place is. Both of these concepts make the characters gloomy; the anger they carry for themselves is masterfully displayed within the text.

Network, The Arabian Post. “Riz Ahmed Wants to Fly the Flag for Everyone Who Feels Like They Don't Fit In.” Arabian Post, 26 Nov. 2016, thearabianpost.com/tap/2016/11/riz-ahmed-wants-to-fly-the-flag-for-everyone-who-feels-like-they-dont-fit-in.html.

The one thing a reader can instantly pick up when looking at Prufrock's thoughts is how he feels about the situation he resides in during the poem. Prufrock completely convinced himself that the place he is in, with all the people being social, is definitely where he does not belong. He believes he sits there as the only odd one out and that no one else will ever be as socially unacceptable and weird as he is. Prufrock has completely accepted the fact that he is indeed an outcast. Another piece of text I read handled a similar kind of thinking, and that was Typecast as a Terrorist by Riz Ahmed. This essay looked at Ahmed's experiences, how he was treated during the pursuit of his career, and what he went through during that time. Ahmed was always racially profiled, insulted, and questioned for his heritage, and it only slowed down because he made his name prominent in the acting world (except at airports). What we can get from this is that Ahmed was an outcast like Prufrock at a point, though the harm done to him may not always make him feel like he's a part of the norm. To feel like you don't belong anywhere can be detrimental, so when reading Prufrock's love song, I felt that his feeling of loneliness can be matched with Ahmed's experience with discrimination. At the end of the day, what we feel after it all is said and done matters more than what happened, and in this case I believe Prufrock and Ahmed have been in a very similar boat. You can see more about Riz Ahmed's thoughts about not fitting in here.