Smith walked slowly along, his boots hitting the wet cement of the sidewalk with a muted thud. He was not a large man, and walking where he was, surrounded by high-rise buildings that reached up to the sky and beyond, he looked small and insignificant. He wore an old trench-coat with grease stains running jaggedly down the front. The sun was bright on the slick-black wetness of the asphalt paving; his hair flopped over his tired eyes. He was carefully following a man, slipping easily in and out of the crowds of pedestrians, always keeping the man in front, in his sight at all times.
The man paused in front of an alleyway, looked both ways a few times and turned into the alley. Smith quickly followed behind. The man went into a door on the right hand side. Smith stopped outside, looked around just as the man had a few moments before.
Gunboat Smith (LOC)
Smith Street, Warwick - no's 55 to 61 Smith Street
Ethel Smith (left) and Fanny Rosenfeld (second fro...Once he'd checked the coast was clear, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a gun. The sunlight glinted off the dull silver of the gun, it looked dangerous, deadly and meant for business. Smith opened the door and stepped inside.
He stood just inside the doorway of the room and watched the scrawny, thin-faced man who had stood up and was staring back at him. The man was Eddie Jones, a small-time bookie who, Smith knew, always carried his assets in his pocket.
"Who are you? How dare you barge inâ¦!" he trailed off, noticing the gun Smith held in his hands.
Smith drew his gun and leveled it at Eddie. He knew what would happen next with crystal clarity, he had everything planned. He had killed seven men in the line of duty and he knew the way everything worked. The police would come,
This in response to T. S. Eliot
The line "Do I dare disturb the universe?" is from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
In "Prufrock" and throughout most of his great poems, Eliot was profoundly and painfully concerned with the spiritual aridity of the universe. But what this writer suggests is a descent from a world of aridity into a world of sordidness and corruption. While this writer might argue that his character shows a courage that Prufrock might have lacked, in the end, what he wants is precisely what Prufrock is bargaining for in the opening of the poem:. Consider those opening lines:
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
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
To lead you to an overwhelming question
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
What are the "you" and "I" of this passage going to do? Why are they going through the half-deserted streets? What is there insidious intent?
I would contend that in this passage, Prufrock is trying to seduce a woman. Further, I think there is an argument that he has succeeded at this before. His suggestion of daring to move the universe does not mean just having sex with a "classier" or more expensive woman. It means that Prufrock is aware that his existence is spiritually and morally bankrupt.
Is Smith any better than Prufrock?
I would point to one missing detail in the story that I think would show how much like Prufrock Smith really is: either before he went out on his errand, or in the Club before he made his way to the corner table, Smith very carefully checked his appearance, getting ready for his chanteuse. To quote Eliot, he took the
time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
. . . time to murder and create.
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