Dryness and Spiritual Decay in The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot peppers "The Waste Land," his apocalyptic poem, with images of modern aridity and inarticulacy that contrast with fertile allusions to previous times. Eliot's language details a brittle era, rife with wars physical and sexual, spiritually broken, culturally decaying, dry and dusty. His references to the Fisher King and mythical vegetation rituals imply that the 20th-century world is in need of a Quester to irrigate the land. "The Waste Land" refuses to provide a simple solution; the properties of the language serve to make for an ambiguous narrative and conclusion, one as confusing and fragmented as Eliot's era itself.
Eliot wastes no time drawing out the first irony of the poem. In the first lines of "The Burial of the Dead," the speaker comments on Jesus' crucifixion and Chaucer while using brutal sounds to relate his spiritual coldness in a warm environment. In "The General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer poetically writes "Whan that April with his showres soote/ The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,/ And bathed every veine in swich licour,/ Of which vertu engrendred is the flowr" (Norton Anthology to English Literature, sixth edition, vol. 1, p.81). For "The Wasteland's" speaker, "April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain" (Norton Anthology of Poetry, fourth edition, p.1236, lines 1-4). The harsh "c's" and muted "d's" throughout point to the speaker's disenchantment with a world full of paradoxes and dichotomies. The "mixing" of "Memory and desire" only hurts him, as do all the verbs, which Eliot places at the ends of their lines to int...
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...o present ideas and to withhold personal interaction, it is difficult to read "The Wasteland" without questioning authorial intent. Is the Fisher King in the last stanza, written in the first person, possibly the poet himself, come to rescue us in Nietzschean Über-Mensch form? Though he would certainly argue against the validity of such a self-enlarging statement (or maybe not), Eliot must have written "The Wasteland" with some hopes that it would somehow end his land's drought. In this sense, then, the writer is a type of Fisher King, and the new ritual is not vegetable harvesting, but writing.
Works Cited:
Abrams et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, sixth edition, vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Ferguson et al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry, fourth edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1996.
When Socrates was sentenced to death, his friend Crito offers to help him escape, but he refuse to escape. He explains to Crito that if he were to escape he would be running away his whole life. He would stay at Athens and comply with the sentence as set by Athens law and die for his cause. Another reason that he gave Crito for not escaping was that he was already death alive and that he was too old to be running away .
Abrams, M. H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York; W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Abrams, M. H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Socrates lived such a private life that it lead to the most important revelation of his entire life. He would go about his life doing nothing but self-examination. In examining his life so strenuously others would come to him to be taught, or to have their children be taught by Socrates. They would offer him money and he would refuse. They would do whatever they could to learn anything Socrates had to teach. What they did not know is that Socrates was not teaching anyone he was simply going about his usual life and people just happened to learn from it. This was also why Socrates was put on trial. He was brought up on two charges, one of impiety and the other of corrupting the youth. These two charges set the course for the last month of his life.
write an "educated" and "insightful" article by using not fact but conjecture to prove his
M.H. Abrams, et al; ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume I. W.W. Norton & Company, New York/London, 1993.
"How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was – such was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth.” – Plato “The Apology”
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher that was born in Athens, Greece around 470/469 BC. He served in the Athenian army and fought in many battles. When Socrates retired from fighting in the army, he began focusing on expressing his beliefs. He wasn’t the typical “teacher” or “preacher”; he was a very critical and analytical thinker that helped guide his students and the Athenians during his time. Through his teachings and beliefs, Socrates had positive and negative influence on the people during his time and modern time. Although he is credited as one of the founders of Western Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and Ethics, his teachings was in disagreement with the teachings of the democracy of Athens, which led to him being put to death. Along with his philosophical beliefs, Socrates’ great thinking led to the creation of the Socratic Method and the Socratic Paradoxes.
Imagine the time just after the death of Socrates. The people of Athens were filled with questions about the final judgment of this well-known, long-time citizen of Athens. Socrates was accused at the end of his life of impiety and corruption of youth. Rumors, prejudices, and questions flew about the town. Plato experienced this situation when Socrates, his teacher and friend, accepted the ruling of death from an Athenian court. In The Last Days of Socrates, Plato uses Socrates’ own voice to explain the reasons that Socrates, though innocent in Plato’s view, was convicted and why Socrates did not escape his punishment as offered by the court. The writings, “Euthyphro,” “The Apology,” “Crito,” and “Pheado” not only helped the general population of Athens and the friends and followers of Socrates understand his death, but also showed Socrates in the best possible light. They are connected by their common theme of a memoriam to Socrates and the discussion of virtues. By studying these texts, researchers can see into the culture of Athens, but most important are the discussions about relationships in the book. The relationships between the religion and state and individual and society have impacted the past and are still concerns that are with us today.
In his defense, Socrates claims over and again that he is innocent and is not at all wise, “…for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great.” Throughout the rest of his oration he seems to act the opposite as if he is better than every man, and later he even claims that, “At any rate, the world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men.” This seems to be his greatest mistake, claiming to be greater than even the jury.
Determinism and free will are incompatible. The events in people’s lives are already chosen for us, or determined. The expected behaviors of people are explained by natural laws and by experiences that they were exposed to. But this viewpoint does not explain people’s intuition. Although, there is a chain of physical causes that lead into people’s intuition.
Abrams, M. H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
There are a number of these images in the works. Many of Picasso's are fairly evident the burning man in the right corner for example or the severed head on the bottom. These show the devastation of the world, as we know it. Eliot has recurring images not unlike these in The Waste Land. Eliot continually refers to the unnatural lack of water in the wasteland or the meaningless broken sex in the society of his day.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.