Journey Through the Streets of Eliot Land

Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights ine one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question....
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.

Paraphrase: Prufrock is taking someone, likely himself on a journey at night, when it is dark out. The act evokes the numbness of a dream. He travels through empty streets by buildings that make odd noises at night. They go by cheap motels in the red lamp district where there are also cheap restaurants. The streets never end ad nauseum and there is a treachous, persuasive quality behind the journey down these streets.The journey is leading him to an imminent question of 'where is death?' as he thinks he is on the edge of life and death.

T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock presents a seductive perspective on love and death. I was most captivated by the initial stanza of the poem. The speaker is inviting someone on a journey at night. The journey is compared to a numbed patient possibly in a dream or state of unconsciousness and goes through half-empty streets. The deserted streets are symbolic of his pessimisstic view on life; he sees everything as half empty. This travel through half-empty streets might imply that they were going through an area of prostitution because prostitutes are so well known for their work at night when almost everything else is closed up and empty. The idea of prostitution is taken further with a reference to one-night stands in inexpensive motels. There is imagery of a cheap bar or restaurant where the elite would never be seen and scary streets that are seductive to the speaker. Instead of just answering the person-being-taken-on-the-journey's question, the speaker draws them further into the thought about the trip. The speaker also travels these streets in a somewhat unfamiliar manner like he has never traveled them before.

Eliot's poetic form enhances the poem with simple consecutive lines rhyming and a refrain to take an idea from the beginning of the poem all the way to the end. Because the poem is about exploration, it is nice that each stanza explores something different. It would be a rather intimidating poem due to its length if it was not broken down.
The first stanza sets the adventurous tone for the rest of the poem. The rest of the poem tells of the speaker aging through baldness, bareness, and thinness. It then returns to talking about the night and sleeping, which might infer death, a final sleep. The speaker wakes up to the same boring routine everyday until death when he wakes up to change and dies at the same time.