SOURCE: “Prufrock and Raskolnikov,” in American Literature, Vol. 17, No. 3, November, 1945, pp. 213-230.

In the following essay, Pope traces similarities between Prufrock and Raskolnikov, the brooding hero of Dostoevski's novel Crime and Punishment, finding in the character Prufrock a similar existential darkness.

It is now over thirty years since J. Alfred Prufrock entered the literary world. He has become so familiar a figure that he can travel without credentials. Nobody asks where he came from. Yet it is misleading to set him down as one of Eliot's amusing and innocuous “observations,” the abject little man hiding a sensitive soul behind the brassy respectability of a morning coat and a calling-card name. Out of his divided personality come suggestions of something latently revolutionary, even anarchic. What does he mean by saying that “there will be time to murder and create”? Why does he consider “disturbing the universe” or likening himself...