Question

In which set of lines in this excerpt from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" does the speaker compare himself to an insect?
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
...
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."

Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

Answer 1

Answer:

"And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?"

Explanation:

Oh, this poem is so good..

I've selected the portion in the poem when the narrator uses metaphor to compare himself to an insect. In this part, he asks what will happen when he is "pinned and wriggling," like a butterfly or beetle that's pinned to a bug collection. Eliot uses this so artfully, my nerd hackles are raised. He's asking -- when I am helpless, uncomfortable, and all my deepest self is exposed -- how shall I explain myself, and who shall I be then?