Grief and fear are the result of love after the inaugural feelings of comfort and delight that come from the happiness of love. Amid the uncertainty Prufrock has to express his love, Eliot writes “And in short, I was afraid.” (86) Eliot reveals part of Prufrock’s …show more content…
By acknowledging Prufrock’s fear of love, Eliot directs that love over time will eventually evolve into emotions such as anxiety. Eliot also uses the idiom “in short” to articulate that Prufrock has gone through many conflicts with love, but in all he “was afraid” and felt concern and despair as a result of love, even after he originally drew interest in love. Further, Prufrock’s fear of love after his encounter with it exhibits that unease can conclude experiences with love. Moreover, Cleary comes to a resolution that “Love is a misleading affliction” (2:53) after discussing the ideas of Siddhārtha Gautama, more commonly known as the Buddha. Cleary goes on to describe that the Buddha characterized love as that “we are trying to satisfy our base desires” (3:04) but romantic love ends up becoming a “great source of suffering.” (3:13) Through the ideas of the Buddha that our “base desires” such as romantic love cause “great suffering,” Cleary comes to the resolution that love at first is appealing because of its emotions of contentment, although