"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Pretty Pimpin"

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and Kurt Vile’s song “Pretty Pimpin” both exemplify ennui and angst in their themes of dissatisfaction and idleness. Both of these works present a narrator that has remained highly hesitant to act on something they want throughout their lives. Eventually both of them lose their chance as time catches up with them. Time is the main thing that connects these two works as it reveals the narrator’s growing lethargic distance from reality. At the same time, while “Pretty Pimpin” shows the narrator startled and humored to see time catch up to him, the narrator in “Alfred Prufrock” eventually admits to himself that he was purposely keeping himself from acting on his desires.

In “Alfred Prufrock,” the speaker begins by proposing a stroll through the streets. Immediately, we notice in the first stanza words such as “etherize,” “half-deserted,” “restless,” and “tedious.” These words allude to a lack of motivation, which then leads to the speaker’s first excuses to delay his intentions. He would rather lead us first through sketchy streets and prolong the conversation instead of getting to the point of his invitation. Through the repetition of the word “time” in the fourth and sixth stanza, he introduces the concept as his main excuse for putting aside everything he wants to do and say. The narrator seems to believe that if he repeats and lists the limitless opportunities time gives, he may somehow remain in control of his future. While he appears idle for the majority of the poem, this lack of motivation to go through with any of his plans also reveals a dejected feeling person. In the end, instead of a blessing, time is a death sentence. Looking back to the words from the first stanza, we see this depressed outlook from the start — “etherize” and “half-deserted.” His anxiety grows in the sixth stanza as he wonders if he would ever dare to act on his wants. He mainly struggles with how to proceed when it comes to women; however, he seems to focus on the sexual relationship with the woman than an actual romantic one. He repeats the line, “And how should I presume?” through stanza 7-9 until he finally asks how he should even begin and, in stanza 12, if he has the strength to “force the moment to its crisis” (80). He finds the idea of courting too much work and surrenders to his idleness. Eventually, the narrator admits that he was never really trying to proceed with anything he fantasized about. He let himself age and wither until finally he gives in to death.

In “Pretty Pimpin,” the narrator is in a state of confusion when he looks at himself in the mirror and realizes time has now aged him into a man. He decides to find humor in his situation, but can not help but only see himself as a stranger from then on. This shows a lack of awareness on his part, and his relaxed reaction to the revelation that he’s losing time shows a different kind of idleness from the one in “Alfred Prufrock.” While Prufrock becomes anxious towards the end of his life, the narrator in “Pretty Pimpin” accepts it with laughter and ignores it unless he is forced to look at himself. Eventually, he begins to lose the ability to tell time when he reveals that he can not remember what day of the week it is. His first guess is a Monday, eventually he settles on a Saturday, but once again he wonders, as he peers at his reflection, “Who’s this stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink?” He sees the stranger before him in disappointment, but rather than dwell on this feeling, he distances himself from his reality. Yet he admits that he always wanted to have fun and become a man, but instead of traveling and being “thousands of miles away” while staying true to himself, he has let his mind stray while remaining physically in place. Towards the end of the song, the speaker stops referring to himself as “I.” He calls himself a boy and speaks of himself in the third-person which shows a loss of a grip on his reality. The speaker finds forgetting time exists easier than admitting, like Prufrock, that he was just insecure and full of uncertainties. Out of the two, it seems that Vile’s song displays a character that never actually had dreams so his lamenting is not as strongly worded as Prufrock's. Nevertheless, both narrators embrace a toxic idleness rather than confront their main problem head-on.