Your question is a bit incomplete since it's missing the options. I've found the complete question online. It is as follows:
Which lines from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” best express themes of alienation and isolation?
A.And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
B.But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
C.No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord…
D.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.
Answer:
The lines that best express themes of alienation and isolation are:
<u>D.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
</u>
<u>I do not think they will sing to me.</u>
Explanation:
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a poem by T. S. Elliot. The speaker is Prufrock himself, a man who is unfulfilled both spiritually and carnally. Prufrock is incapable of interacting socially due to his exacerbated insecurity. He believes he will be judged ugly and dull if he ever chooses to leave his home and talk and dine with other people.
Much of his concern involves women, since they seem unattainable to him. He longs for contact, for a relationship, but can only think of them as impossibly distant. Towards the end of the poem, Prufrock mentions the mermaids, mythological beings who live in the ocean and sing to enchant and attract sailors. Even the mermaids do not sing to Prufrock. He feels so inferior, so undesirable, the even the very beings whose purpose in existing is to sing to men do not want to sing to him. They are, obviously, a representative of the speaker's isolation and alienation, of all the women seen by the speaker as desirable but unreachable.
