The Waste Land - Who is T S Eliot's 'You'
It's easy to forget a word as simple as the second person pronoun 'you'. But, as Dr Thomas Day shows, it is well worth paying close attention to the various ways in which it is used. Whether speaking to an individual character, to a more general humanity, to the reader or the poet addressing himself, the complexity of voices in the poem extends not only to the speaking voice, but also to the person being addressed.