and fear of women. Ironically, Prufrock dreams of saying: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,/ Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"(94-95), a biblical allusion to Lazarus, an elderly man brought back to life by Jesus - unfortunately for Prufrock, even if his dream came true, he still wouldn't know what to tell them all, or how. Prufrock echoes the old cliche "Ah... to be young again; and know then what I know now." Unfortunately for Prufrock, it will take a miracle to make him either younger or give him the knowledge he seeks. Eliot doesn't give any sense of hope for him in the poem - he remains a doomed character until the very end. Prufrock even admits that he has "seen the moment of my greatness flicker,"(84) - a victim of time and natural selection. Prufrock's connection to nature and the cycle of life is also an important factor in understanding his state of mind. In the third stanza, Eliot creates an image of yellow fog, connecting Prufrock's consciousness and emotions to nature in a lazy, animal-like way. This connection echoes not only the insignificance of Prufrock's emotional state in a "natural world" context, but the futility of Prufrock's efforts should he try to contend with Mother Nature and change his behavior - relating to Prufrock's feeling of entrapment and inability to change his situation. He wishes to himself, instead, that he could be a mindless crab, scurrying around the bottom of the ocean; another example of Prufrock's impression of his position in the natural world - rarely comparing himself to real people. In fact, in his dream sequence at the end when he imagines how his life might end up, he envisions himself as an ocean creature, surrounded by mermaids "Till human voices wake us, and we drown." Once again, Eliot disconnects Prufrock from the real world. Even though Prufrock's fantasies to be a crab, swim with the mermaids, be young again like Lazarus, talk to women about Michelangelo with the po...
