Anti-hero

As a noted scholar Joseph Campbell once said, “The hero is today running up against a hard world that is in no way responsive to the spiritual need. Modern society has become a stagnation of inauthentic lives and living that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities or even our physical courage.” The world we live in today is basically hostile to heroism that makes many people observers rather than participants in exciting adventures. I certainly agree that J Alfred Prufrock from The love song is an antihero, who is extremely egocentric and disillusioned. In the poem, Prufrock is a man of passivity. “Do I dare? Do I dare?” Unlike a hero, Prufrock is unwilling to take any physical action to pursue his goal. Instead he only overly worries himself over it which makes him depressed and lack of self confident. With such negative self talk, Prufrock wants to be a paired of ragged claws, scuttling across the silent sea as if he willing to become thin air and disappear from society. This kind of talk makes Prufrock an observer instead of an active participant who wants to contribute some action to the world. As the violence of war raged the earth, people no longer believe in heroes and believe the best thing to do in life is to sit around and do nothing.