T.S. Eliot shifts the reader from a distant perspective to a more intimate closeness to the subject. Give an example of how the poem keeps the...

From the outset, Eliot brings the reader up close to
Prufrock by inviting him or her to go along with the poem's narrator on a private and
personal journey. The speaker states:

readability="6">

Let us go then, you and
I

in the opening line. This
indicates to us that we are traveling alongside Prufrock on his journey. Together,
speaker and reader will traverse the streets, avoiding
the

overwhelming
question

together:

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let us go and make our
visit

However, in the next
stanza, we are removed and see the scene from a
distance:

The
yellow for that rubs its back upon the window panes,

The
yellow smoke that runs its muzzle on the
windowpanes

Consistently, we
are taken close to the narrator as he tells us all about his many attempts to be a part
of the world (and to connect with the women there), and his equally many failures. We
are let in on his deepest secrets and fears of growing old having done
nothing:

With
a bald spot in the middle of my hair

But how his legs and
arms are thin

I have measured out my life with coffee
spoons

Over and over, we bear
witness to his insecurities, then are pulled back again to see the scene as he sees
it:

In the
room the women come and go

Talking of
Michelangelo

The significance
of this is that Eliot was writing during the Modernist period just after WW2. People, as
a whole, were cursed with an inability to act, surrounded by a world and a culture that
was fractured and torn apart. Prufrock is symbolic of the time, and our connection with
him draws us in as our ability to view him from a distance helps us to put things in
perspective.