What does Granny Weatherall have in common with J. Alfred Prufrock?

Granny Weatherall and J. Alfred Prufrock are two titular characters in Porter's short story and Eliot's poem, respectively. In both of these works of literature, the narration takes us very close to the character's thoughts, and there's a general wandering sense of exploring memories and scenes from the past and present in both of these works. The more specific similarities you might find between Granny and Prufrock are numerous. Let's take a look at each...

Granny Weatherall and J. Alfred Prufrock are two titular characters in Porter's short story and Eliot's poem, respectively. In both of these works of literature, the narration takes us very close to the character's thoughts, and there's a general wandering sense of exploring memories and scenes from the past and present in both of these works. The more specific similarities you might find between Granny and Prufrock are numerous. Let's take a look at each one.

 First, both characters feel like outsiders as sensory details float past them:

• "[Granny] listened to the leaves rustling outside the window. No, somebody was swishing newspapers: no, Cornelia and Doctor Harry were whispering together."


• "I [Prufrock] know the voices dying with a dying fall/Beneath the music from a farther room." 

They both also latch onto specific objects and images as they ruminate on the past:

• "Since the day [Granny's] wedding cake was not cut, but thrown out and wasted."


• "My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,/My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin"

Granny and Prufrock both think mournfully and seriously about the ideas of failed relationships and rejection. In both of their minds, the harshness of reality intrudes on their ideals of romance and romantic images:

• "What does a woman [Granny] do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn’t come?"


• "When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table"

Prufrock and Granny also both focus on the inevitability of death, as well as what might happen after death:

• "Granny lay curled down within herself, amazed and watchful, staring at the point of light that was herself; her body was now only a deeper mass of shadow in an endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and swallow it up. God, give a sign!"


• "'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,/Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all--'”

They also both react indignantly and with self-consciousness to the notion that they're growing old:

• "Sometimes Granny almost made up her mind to pack up and move back to her own house where nobody could remind her every minute that she was old."


• "With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — /(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)"

Finally, both characters are slightly unreliable as narrators of their own experiences. Granny's failing senses as she approaches death make it hard for her to distinguish among dreams, memory, and reality throughout the story ("Doctor Harry floated like a balloon") and Prufrock seems to contradict himself, saying that he's not a prophet, but he has had a vision of his head brought in on a platter.