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Table of Contents

T.S. Eliots The Waste Land ........................................................................................................... 2
1. Brief Preamble ......................................................................................................................... 2
1.1 Commentary on the structure .............................................................................................. 2
2. The Burial of the Dead ............................................................................................................ 3
3. A Game of Chess ..................................................................................................................... 4
4. The Fire Sermon ...................................................................................................................... 5
5. Death by Water ........................................................................................................................ 6
6. What the Thunder Said ............................................................................................................ 7












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T.S. Eliots The Waste Land
1. Brief Preamble

ue to his various contributions to criticism, poetry, prose, and drama, T.S. Eliot is
considered to be one of the most influential authors of the 20
th
century. Also,
theres no denying that he was one of the most erudite people of his age and justly
received a Nobel Prize in Literature for his outstanding contributions to poetry.
Wed not be in the wrong to surmise, as was done so, that not only is T.S. Eliots The Waste
Land his most prominent work, but haply, along with Joyces Ulysses, the greatest work of
modernist literature. Needless to say, both works are similar in many ways which go far beyond
a common concern with modern civilization and mans place in it.

In the Waste Land Eliot incorporated a lot of seemingly irrelevant and nearly unknown
references to history, classic literature, religion, mythology, and myriad of other disciplines,
making this poem one of the hardest literary works to read and understand. Some parts of the
poem are even written in foreign languages, such as German and French. One of the probable
reasons why he fashioned this poem so arduous to interpret is that Eliot, who was utterly
disillusioned after the ravages war, saw that Western culture was headed for ruination, and that
people were beginning to utterly neglect their intellectual abilities. That is why, in order to
understand the poem thoroughly, one must needs spend countless hours beavering away in a
library.

1.1 Commentary on the structure

In its original draft, the poem was approximately twice in length, but got truncated on
preposition by one of his fellow contemporaries, Ezra Pound, from whom great guidance unto
Eliot bestowed was. He also advised him to abolish the rhyme scheme, though there are some
incomplete rhythmic parts which serve to reference the long forsaken literary past. Therefore, he
dedicated the poem to Pound, calling him il miglior fabbro, taken from Dantes Purgatorio,
and roughly translates to the better craftsman. In addition, this can be regarded as a stream of
consciousness poem as well, since the narrator is not addressing any external party, but himself.
D
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With its disjointed structure which constitutes a coherent whole at the end, the poem also
resembles Joyces works. The poems framework also takes after the Holy Grail folklore
encompassing the Fisher King tale and his infertility which affects the kingdom, turning it into
wasteland. It is comprised out of five parts which deserve a scrupulous analysis and shall be thus
scrutinized thoroughly in the following segments of this paper.
2. The Burial of the Dead

In the epigraph, taken from Petronius Satyricon, Sybil, a woman who was granted
immortality by Apollo, proclaims that her only wish is to die, as she only grows older and older.
Thus, the epigraph perfectly mirrors Eliots predicament in the modern world: he abides in a
culture which has wilted and decomposed but will not cease; and he has to live with the
reminders of its whilom grandeur.
The first section of the first part opens on a funeral scene in April, when the puissance of
nature brings back everything to life out of its dormant interment. Normally, spring would
connote rebirth and mirth, but for our speaker it only evokes only sadness and memory of
bygone days, which is a reference to Chaucers Canterbury Tales. In modern world, winter,
which makes you oblivious to your existence, is indeed more preferable.
The poem then gives way to childhood memories of an aristocratic female named Marie, who
had an archduke for a cousin. Her recollections are also hurting; the plain life of sledding,
cousins, and coffee in the park has been replaced by emotional perplexities ensuing after the war.
The subject of memory has been attributed paramount importance in the Waste Land, as it
creates a conflict between the present and the past, which indicates how badly everything has
decomposed. Marie reads most of the night, not having to do much else.
The second section, in turn, is prophetic. Here, Eliot evokes the real wasteland, or a stony
rubbish (allusion based on Ezekiel); a man can only recognize a heap of broken images,
meaning that we live our life on a superficial level, loath to strain mentally and produce anything
meaningful. Against this sterile, lifeless desert, the speaker places an erotic scene of the
hyacinth girl, with whom he had some romantic relationship. The harrowing resonance of the
earlier scene yields the revelation of nothingness the speaker now has to offer.
In the final line of the episode focus turns from the desert to the sea, representing essential
nothingness itself. The line is taken from Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde where Tristan waits
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for Isolde to come heal him. Unfortunately, she never arrives; hence the possibility of healing is
thwarted in every sense.
The third section goes deeply into the theme of transformation. Madame Sosostris, a literary
allusion to Aldous Huxleys novel Crome Yellow, conducts an unusual form of fortunetelling,
alternating a set of vague symbols into predictions, many of which will come to fruition in the
ensuing sections. Eliot also changed the original pack of cards and gave them symbolic
significance. The drowned sailor is a reference to Shakespeares play The Tempest.
In the final section, the true wasteland of the poem is unraveled to us the modern city.
Eliots London alludes to Baudelaires Paris (Unreal city), Dickens London (the brown fog of
a winter dawn), and Dantes Hell (the flowing crowd of the dead). The town is deserted and
barren, inhabited and seemingly only inhabitable by the specters of the past. One of them is the
apparition named Stetson, a war victim whom the speaker nags with a set of diabolical inquiries
about a corpse he planted in his garden, but receives no answers whatsoever.
3. A Game of Chess

The second part of the poem is dubbed A Game of Chess, a title taken from Thomas
Middletons play, in which the moves in a game of chess stand for phases in a seduction. This
section juxtaposes two contrasting scenes, one of high society and one of the lower classes. Eliot
opens this section with blank verse, but later this sense of order starts to fall apart, which is but
appropriate since society is undergoing its own spiritual breakdown in the modern world.
The first aristocratic woman is alluded to by Cleopatra, Dido, and even Keats Lamia (though
Eliot would not have admitted to having been influenced by Keats in any way). She appears
disturbed, overly sensitive, though not very intellectual, surrounded by exquisite ornaments.
Dido and Cleopatra committed suicide out of frustrated love. Unlike them, this woman will never
become the cultural touchstone, as her dejection is more pathetic than moving. She bids her lover
tell her his thoughts, and we see that he can only think of drowning, again referencing
Shakespeares The Tempest.
She is thereupon blatantly likened to Philomela, a character from Ovids Metamorphoses,
who was raped by the king who cut out her tongue to prevent her from telling the truth.
However, she wove a tapestry and divulged the secret to her sister, who then killed the kings
son and fed him to the king. The sisters are then transformed into birds, Philomela into a
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nightingale, which is why the nightingale is often called Philomel in poetry. This comparison
suggests that this woman, trapped in the labyrinth of the modern world, is unable to
communicate her inner life to the world. Ultimately, the woman and the pleasant ambiance
engulfing her are utterly sterile and meaningless, as indicated by the nonsense song she croons.
This whole time, the speaker is waiting for a knock upon the door as if hes waiting for
someone to enter his life and give it meaning. In this sense, modern life just seems like an
endless waiting for something which never comes.
The subsequent part transitions to a London bar room, where two women discuss a third one.
This section is surprisingly devoid of cultural allusions which permeate the rest of the poem.
Eliot makes the dialogue of these two women worryingly pessimistic, which contributes greatly
the already gloomy tone of the poem. Their friend Lil has apparently done everything right
married, borne offspring, supported her husband yet is still hurt by her aging body. She also
had an abortion, because she did not want her fifth child and was not the same ever since. Just as
the symbolic landscape can no longer sustain life, we have lower class women killing their
babies. Interestingly enough, this section ends with Ophelias suicide speech in Hamlet by
repetition of the phrase good night.
4. The Fire Sermon

The title of the third, longest section of the poem is taken from a sermon given by Buddha
where he adorns with courage his followers to renounce earthly passion and search for liberty
form earthly things.
The section opens with a frightful image of despondency on a riverside scene, describing the
ultimate wasteland, which is cold, dry, and fraught with waste material. He says that the nymphs
are departed, which means that this place, once magical, is now reduced to only but a shadow of
its former splendor. The speaker then, by introducing lines from Spensers Prothalamion (Sweet
Thames run softly till I end my song), likens the state in which the river now fallen is to its
former glory.
The most salient image in these lines, however, is the rat, which scavenges the remnants of
the refuse others left. Much like this rat, Eliot also invokes whatever he can from earlier
generations so as to sustain his poetic life. More than any other section, The Fire Sermon
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includes fragments of well known songs to indicate how low the culture has sunken, including
the nightingale song from Oliver Goldsmiths The Vicar of Wakefield.
The sexual encounters which ensue in this section are highly fruitless. Eugenides, Smyrna
merchant of Madame Sosostris tarot cards, proposes a homosexual tryst, the nature of which is
quite opposite to the idea of fertility. Currants in his pockets also symbolize the impossibility of
regeneration. The speaker then pronounces himself to be Tiresias, a prophet from classical
mythology who was turned into a woman by goddess Hera for seven years for having smitten
dead a couple of snakes he encountered on the road. Apparently hes blind but can see the future.
Eliot uses Tiresias as a sort of an isolated observer who can see visions from all over the world
and impart its awfulness.
We are afterward presented one of Tiresias visions in which he observes a young typist who
awaits her lover, a dull egotistical clerk. They are both desolate in their way, though at least
reproduction is feasible in their case.
Briefly thereupon, a short interlude takes place describing an everyday scene. First, a
fishermans bar is delineated, then a splendent church interior, and finally the Thames itself. The
scene then changes to Queen Elizabeth and her encounter with the Earl of Leicester. For political
reasons, she was obliged to constantly present herself as available for marriage. This comes in
stark contrast to Fisher King tale: To protect the vigor of the land, she was forcd to compromise
her sexuality; whereas in the Fisher King story, the reinvigoration of the land comes with the
renewal of Kings sexual potency. All of this supplements the quandary of renewal in the modern
world.
Tiresias is substituted by St. Augustine in the concluding segments of this section. This part
ends with one word burning, isolated on the page, revealing the pointlessness of mans
struggles.
5. Death by Water

The fourth section of the poem is entitled Death by Water, and is the shortest one of the
five. It depicts Phlebas the Phoenician, who has died by drowning. Being dead, he is oblivious to
worldly cares, and the narrator asks us to consider him and ponder on our own mortality. The
major goal of this section is to rebuff the idea of regeneration. It is also the section where one of
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Madame Sosostris prophecies comes to realization, fear death by water. However, the only
message Phlebas gives us is that death and decay eventually conquer everything.
6. What the Thunder Said

The final section of the poem is entitled What the Thunder Said. The apocalyptic imagery at the
beginning of the final section is taken from the crucifixion of Christ. The lines pertain to a moment after
Christs death, but ere his rebirth on Easter Sunday. Therefore, they convey a sense of waiting and
wonderment, meaning that we are still not sure if any rebirth is going to happen. The repetitive language
further implies that not only will there be no rebirth but there will be no survival either. Cities are
ravaged, restored, and destroyed again, conveying the repetitive downfall of cultures: Jerusalem, Egypt,
Greece, etc. This is an allusion to Herman Hesses essay The Brothers Karamazov or the Downfall of
Europe, where Hesse reveals the fact that nearly half of Eastern Europe is on the road to chaos.
Thereafter, a chapel in a decrepit state is portrayed, relating to the chapel in the Holy Grail. On its top
a rooster crows, and the rain comes, adorning the desiccation of the land with new life. Interestingly
however, no hero has emerged to claim the Grail.
The scene alters to the river Ganges in India where thunder rumbles. Eliot thereat evokes
traditional interpretation of what the thunder says, taken from Hindu fables. In these fables, the
thunder gives, controls, and sympathizes with its speech. Eliot, asking what have we given? realizes
that the only time people give is in the sexual act, which is essentially ephemeral. Not only does he
fail to find any signs of giving, but there are no acts of sympathy in modern world, where everyone
thinks only about themselves. The mention of Shakespeares Coriolanus further develops the idea of
selfishness, as he was a great soldier who acted out of pride instead of duty. The third idea, that of
self-control, is one of the biggest problems with the modern world, since we dont resist temptation
anymore. The most important word in these lines is the word obedient as Eliot is telling us to be
obedient to something greater than ourselves (some higher ideal), since people turned away from
religion but found naught to replace it with.
Finally Eliot turns to the Fisher King again, whos still fishing. His chance of regeneration is long
forsaken; instead, he will do his best to put in order whatever remains of his kingdom. Allusions pour
near the end, which can be understood as a final attempt at coherence. The king offers some comfort,
saying that it will be possible to carry on despite the failed redemption. The poem ends on a slight note of
hope, with the words in Hindu which translate to the peace which passeth all understanding. They offer
us a new value system and a way of living unbeknownst to us giving us something to look forward to in
our own dead world.

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