Unlike "The Waste Land," the speaker of this long lyric poem seems to pretty much stay the same person. It's also not that much of a stretch to associate this speaker with Eliot himself, in fact, though that's always a tricky proposition. What can't be denied is that the speaker draws specifically from Eliot's personal life, recreating his walk around the old property of "Burnt Norton" or referring to Eliot's work as a night watchman at the Faber publishing building during the air raids of WWII. The speaker in this poem is super-meditative, though also and super-repetitive, especially when it comes to encouraging us to let go of our egos and our "normal" relationship to time and goals. But hey, at least the speaker is trying to be helpful in this poem. If you read "The Waste Land" or "The Hollow Men," it seems like all Eliot wants to do is talk about how brutal the modern world is. But here, at least his speaker's trying to help us out, even though he admits that true spiritual growth is going to hurt.