You should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas Placing it in the context of the entire poem explain the complexity of the symbols used in these lines?
This was originally a bigger section. But during the cuts to the
poems, this entire section was cut out except for this line; hence,
it doesn't really fit smoothly into the rest of Prufrock. I cannot
fantom into the thinking of Eliot, but this line seems to me to be
a lementation by Prufrock at the hopelessness of his situation.