The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Plato's Allegory of the Cave

When I started reading in detail this poem of T.S. Elliot I remembered my classes of philosophy in high school and I realized that the protagonist of “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is pretty similar to the prisoners in the Plato´s allegory of the cave.

The fear, the insecurity and indecisions, the “do I dare?” are like the chains which keep the prisoners in the cave, trapped in the shadows that they believe is the real world. They, prisoners and Prufrock, are chained by their thoughts, by their procrastination, by their conformism, by their fear to change, by their fear to face the real world.

“Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

Prufrock is thinking about breaking these chains, as the prisoner who releases himself in a moment of bravery, of courage, a moment of desire of the genuine world out of the cave, a moment of the need of being different from those prisoners who do not make any effort to get out of the cave. This person no longer want to be part of that crowd of prisoners, he wants to live no more in a world of shadows, where the reality is disturb, is limited and blurred, and once he is outside he realizes that all his life he was blind, that the “real world of the shadows” was not even close to be real at all, and he feels compassion for those who are still in the cave, for those who, like Prufrock, are afraid of the change, afraid of being different, for those who are part of the crowd which live in a world of shadows private of the knowledge and the real world.

When I realized of these similarities between Prufrock and the prisoners, I started thinking about my own chains, my fear to face uncomfortable situations or maybe to face realities which are totally unknown by me. Nowadays, people tend to be in their comfort zone because they are afraid to fail, to be different, to face the faces of the judgment. Why we are so afraid of the change, of the different? Why sometimes we are like Prufrock and we think a lot before making decisions?

I would like to share an image that caught my attention while I was looking for sources for my piece of writing. Do you think that social networks are the chains which keep us far from a real face to face communication? Don´t you believe that those conversation in social networks are just the shadows of a real conversation?