"When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?"
I have chosen this section of "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock" to analyze, specifically on the phenomena of spitting out the butt-ends of cigarettes. This image lacks an explicit smell, though there certainly is an implicit one: smokers smell like their smoke. The narrator also gives the terrible sound of forcibly expelling the undesirable part of his cigarette -- I believe that this is where he has to explain his tools and assess if it was worth it. Finally, there is the taste of inadequacy. The character is under an anxiety attack and seems to be ready to faint.
There is more pressure added because I do not think that the narrator believes himself to be adequate to measure up to the eyes staring at him. It feels like this is at work due to him being pinned, and that would directly reference his tie pin; however, it might also be that he has entered the room of the women. I think that the latter is more likely given that the chorus of the poem is:
"In the room, the women come and go"
Talking of Michelangelo. He seems to have spent a great deal of his life trying to "measure up" to a certain standard that he feels he has failed to do. He asks how he should presume because he does not know what to do; Eliot has trouble admitting when he lacks knowledge -- not fear, no he can admit fear -- but a lack of knowledge is a sin for Eliot.
The cigarette butts represent his tools. These are the sacrifices he made to accomplish where he stands in life. Every cigarette is a "necessary" sacrifice of health in exchange for pleasure and focus. Spitting out the butt-ends means that he has to justify the story of his day and hope that it is adequate -- he even recognizes that he may be being put on by the women in that last question of the stanza. The cigarettes also denote a certain crutch to lean on during the day. Eliot mentions the old men smoking their pipes and watching them gain a certain comfort.
I think the narrator may even be ready to propose marriage to this woman, but he fears far too much from such an act. I think that marriage is the overwhelming question in this poem if you read it as a love song as love songs tend to be. They do not tend to refer to the person singing themselves as the beloved, but instead a woman (since Prufrock is a man). The cigarette butt-ends relate because I suspect that these women are critical of tobacco.
My suspicion draws upon the old men and their pipes. I think that the narrator wants to blame his smoke smell on the old men, but he does not want to end up like those old men: either lonely or trapped in a marriage and made lonely. Which is what I want to leave you with today. Prufrock, not quite a hundred years ago, suffered immensely with commitment and allowing himself to feel pleasure. Cigarettes and tobacco were a great pleasure because they allow one to escape the world for a few moments and focus on whatever they choose. I do not think that life is that frightening, and chances are not either. Opportunities can be scary and they can often turn out nothing like one calculates; however, I do not think that we can go through life in fear and anxiety. This poem serves as an ironic look at how being unable to cope with life can lead a person to anxious self-loathing. Whereas courage to ask the overwhelming question and seek its answer can save a soul from mundane etherization of life.
CITATION: Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poems 1909-1925. London: Faber & Faber, 1924. Gleeditions. Web. 6/26/16
