false self

Prufrock is Eliot's parody of the ego who longs to be that other, even as he excuses himself from the unmanageable confrontation: the self who is, one way and another, no more than a shadow of what he dissociates himself from so regretfully.
he is a diffident John the Baptist, who deplores his own incapacity to acknowledge, let alone evangelize for the god whose death he has already in some way foresuffered.