Prufrock Revisited

T.S. Eliot writes that, in the thoughts of Prufrock, that HE is a spiritually empty man. What does that say about humanity? It gives it a nihilistic taste and tone to the poem. It adds flavor and character to the poem, because I've realized that all great poems invoke some sort of thought that questions an abstract and deep thing that humans cannot really put a concrete answer on. Maybe that's the secret ingredient to great poets - just writing about deep things. An example would be like Emily Dickinson's poems that invoke the feelings of death and the such. Prufrock says he'd rather be a pair of lobster claws - that just says he's a man that's in the passenger seat. He can't do a thing to save himself - he's the observer and the watcher of his life. He does not do, he watches. He lets things happen. That is why T.S. Eliot writes about him - a helpless man just contemplating shallow subjects.