Timeless

Hamlet and J. Alfred Prufrock have one main aspect in common: procrastination. They both intend on prolonging the pain of what they have to do throughout the play or poem. They riddle us around words and rhymes extending a decision that could have been taken in the first few minutes of each literary work. They will lead themselves doing nothing in that whole time and at the end they will brand a simple action after all that time of thought and previous meditation.

Hamlet is a very analytical character, and that is what leads him to procrastinate. With his renowned quote “To be or not to be, that is the question” shows his extreme empathy to indecision. Hamlet being such and analytical person might consider questions like living or not living while the play develops. Yet he takes it to extremes, he carefully plans and thoroughly questions his actions. Hamlet without noticing has a special way of delaying his actions he first questions, to then rationalize with his thinking, to finally procrastinate on a decision. They are various small conflicts Hamlet encounters all finally leading him to taking a procrastinated action on the global picture of whether to kill Claudius or not, which he ends up doing.

On the other hand J. Alfred Prufrock has no hint of being an analytical character; he is not really overanalyzing the situation he is simply devoured by fear. Prufrock has no sense of time as he seems it is never going to run out. As when he claims “there will be time, there will be time. To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” it is obvious his actions are mandated by a constant fear to proceed, to act. He believes prolonging the action will make him take a better approach on it, when it really won’t. Prufrock delays his actions by demonstrating fear and negligence at each aspect he is given to move forward towards declaring his love. Maybe he feels timeless, like a broken watch, but his life did move on and, his love was not accomplished. After all the blabbering he gives us he then procrastinates, much like Hamlet did.

We as humans all tend to procrastinate on a daily basis; we evade our chores and believe that some magical force will someday do them. It is hard to push yourself into solving rather boring tasks but you will someday have to do them. Both Hamlet’s and Prufrock’s tasks are hyperboles of those we encounter but they leave us a message, both characters pushed their problems away to extremes. Deviated from the obvious path and therefore their lives were meaningless.