In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot reveals the thoughts and feelings of the poem’s subject, Prufrock, in a way that Prufrock could not have articulated himself, since it is the poem’s objective to illustrate Prufrock’s insecurity. By not commenting directly and allowing the reader to draw conclusions from clues given in dramatic monologue, personification and he uses imagery.
The poem is set as a monologue, since the speaker refers to a listener in the opening line as "you:" "Let us go then, you and I," (Eliot 1). This lets the reader know that what is stated is being spoken to another person. Since a dramatic monologue typically reveals character traits that the speaker is unaware of, Eliot uses this to give the reader a clue about how to read his poem.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” uses a lot of imagery. Imagery also reveals the inner feelings of Prufrock. For example, when he says he "should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas", he is indicating that he wishes he hadn't been born. Prufrock also does not feel comfortable revealing his feelings, he views it as a lantern throwing "nerves in patterns on a screen". “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T.S. Eliot had many different examples of personification present in his poem, one of them being, “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell