Prufrock: "My Body Is A Cage" by Arcade Fire

Katie Nguyen
(Song Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdve08cG3pE)

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a lamenting modernist display of the longings and dissatisfactions of a young man who feels trapped in passivity and self-doubt. Arcade Fire’s song “My Body Is A Cage” encapsulates the internal anguish that the speaker alludes throughout the poem. As one might expect, Eliot’s poem is much denser than the lyrics of the song and his narrative flow explores many different avenues in the speaker’s roundabout way of dancing around his intentions. While the forms may differ, especially due to genre convention, both works are keen explorations of self-entrapment and disorientation in the world at large.

Right from the start, Arcade Fire encompasses the source of internal distress that weaves through “Prufrock,” singing, “My body is a cage that keeps me / From dancing with the one I love / But my mind holds the key”. Arcade Fire poignantly compares the mental paralysis of social anxiety and self-doubt to a more tangible sense of confinement. There is a palpable frustration that emerges in situations such as these, where the obstacles are imagined and internal, yet still insurmountable, thus exemplified through “my mind holds the key”. “Prufrock” is similarly trapped in a cycle of passivity and inaction, as evidenced by his incessant self-questioning. He asks “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” and “So how should I presume? / And how should I begin?”. Immobilized by doubts and negative affirmations of what he “knows to be true”, Prufrock is stalled before he ever truly begins.

Interestingly enough, both Eliot’s poem and Arcade Fire’s song call into play the idea of theatricality and performance through metaphor. Though “Prufrock” is completely saturated with allusions, perhaps the most overt reference is when he exclaims “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do… Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse”. Eliot invokes theatre and its clear archetypes to articulate his sense of displacement in his own consciousness. He has essentially taken a backseat to his entire life, which he dually relies upon and resents. His disproportionate self-image relegates him to the realm of the inactionable, rendering him to the service of the main plotline, whatever he conceives that to be. However, it also conveniently alleviates him from ever having to exert agency or any action in pursuit of his own wants and desires, which the lead role, the Hamlet of the story, must do.

This is where a key difference emerges between the poem and the song. “My Body Is A Cage” is an anguished declaration of a paralyzing social anxiety that culminates into a desperate plea to be relinquished from its grip. Especially apparent in the ending lyrics “Set my spirit free / Set my body free,” there is a war between the mind and the body, the desire and the execution. “Prufrock,” which still a lamentation of a self-imposed passivity, produces a more melancholic, regretful air that still ventures to excuse and explain his inactions. However, it must be noted that “Prufrock” is structured as an invitation to the object of his affection, so his leniency upon himself is careful and measured. “My Body Is A Cage” is an inward exultation, a plea toward himself or the universe at large. Empirically, the two works differ in their intended audience, but one could certainly adhere “My Body Is A Cage” to “Prufrock” as an internal representation of his torment and anxiety.

In that vein of applied analysis, the song’s application of theatrical metaphor becomes increasingly poignant. Arcade Fire sings “I’m standing on a stage / Of fear and self-doubt / It’s a hollow play / But they’ll clap anyway”. Rather than playing into the utility of character in theatre, “My Body is A Cage” utilizes the performativity aspect of the medium. He likens himself to an unconvincing performer going through the motions of his life. Later in the song, he sings “I’m living in an age / That calls darkness light,” denoting his detachment from the world and its workings that stems from his lack of being able to communicate effectively. Similar to Prufrock’s line “Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse,” there is an emphasis on a lack of intent behind the words the speakers are able to say that contrasts the surplus of desire that they cannot articulate. Later in the poem, Eliot writes “It is impossible to say just what I mean! / But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen” which is extraordinarily similar to the lyric, “Though my language is dead / Still the shapes fill my head”. Both lines evoke the sense of an inarticulable, emotional vastness that both speakers struggle to express in any kind of lucid or intelligible manner. This, in turn, feeds into the frustration and internal anguish that has been culminating into a profound sense of tormented regret and angst.

Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Arcade Fire’s “My Body is A Cage” concern themselves with a nuanced form of angst and dissatisfaction with one’s life and place in the world at large. While there are certainly some tonal and empirical differences, “My Body is A Cage” offers a fitting and powerful supplement to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” that delves into the intricacies of internal journey that Prufrock could conceivably suffer from.

(WC: 903)