A wasteland [weyst-land] is defined as: land that is uncultivated or barren; an area that is devastated as by flood, storm, or war; something as a period of history, phase of existence, or locality that is spiritually, or intellectually barren; one of the most important poems of the twentieth century (Dictionary.com). The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, has puzzled its audience and been tossed aside by the general population since 1922, when the poem was published. To a reader not committed to delving into its metaphors, the story might appear to represent the broken faithlessness of a society physically and emotionally marred after the Great War. However, Eliot intended the meaning to be much deeper. He strived to capture the struggle of awareness and ambivalence between moral grandeur and mortal evil (Britannica 2). The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, provides an eulogy for an intellectual society murdered by the Jazz Age through the multi-metaphorical symbols of the epigraph, “The Burial of the Dead,” “A Game of Chess,” “The Fire Sermon,” “Death by Water,” and “What the Thunder Said.”
The poem begins with an epigraph of “Satyricon,” in ancient Greek and Latin. That story is of Cumaean Sibyl, Apollo’s prophetess, wishing for immorality. She is granted this, however, it is immortality without eternal youth. Therefore, she miserably and painfully grows older forever, never dying (Arbiter 7). The quote translates into:
I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a cage, and when the boys cried at her, “Sybil, what do you want?” she responded, “I wish I were dead.” (Eliot 99)
This seems like a pessimistic excerpt to precede a story that is comprehensively equally angst. The connection Eliot saw between this piece of “Satyricon” a...
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...ersity. Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 20. Nov. 2013. Thank God for Shmoop. This is the best, most descriptive, in debt source on the internet for this subject.
Spark Notes Editorial Team. “Spark Notes: Eliot’s Poetry: Themes, Motifs, & Symbols.” SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web 05 Dec. 2013. This was a necessary, but undesired source. It filled in some gaps in my paper with useful information.
“The Waste Land.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. This source was insightful. The text was very plain and boring. Also I do not appreciate how they conjoin their vowels.
“Wasteland.” Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, 20 Nov. 2013. Knowing the definition of key words fully is always important in understanding and analyzing literature. Dictionary.com is never a disappointment.
History has seen advancements in technology, philosophy, and industry, all of which radically changed the lives of those witnessing such developments. Slower, more relaxed lifestyles have given way to lifestyles of a faster paced nature. George Eliot describes her preference for the leisure of the past, conveying the message that the rushed leisure of her time is hardly leisure at all. She accomplishes this by using several stylistic devices, including personification, imagery, and diction.
Eliot, T.S. The wasteland. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1447-1463.
T.S. Eliot opens his Four Quartets with two epigraphs from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus: “though logos is common, many live as if they have wisdom of their own”, and “the way upward and the way downward is one and the same”. These ideas tie closely with the opening lines of the first quartet Burnt Norton, where Eliot questions whether all time can be redeemed or not. This idea of redemption ties closely with Original Sin. The exploration of redemption, exemplified through the frequent rose imagery, snakes throughout the work haunting every figure within it, “what if we had gone down the passage and through the door into the rose-garden?” until at last he triumphantly concludes “the rose and fire are one”. Lingering beneath the roses, philosophers, and fire, is a meditation on the dichotomy of meaning between time and eternity. Eliot reaches the conclusion that all time is redeemable, but only through the interaction of both time and eternity. This interaction occurs only at the still turning point, the impossible union: the Incarnation. Percolating within the Incarnation, is the concept of logos, an intensely dense and rich philosophical idea
...e state of waste is not perpetual, we can find strength and hope for a better future. The ability to convey these messages with such strength along with the ability to powerfully effect his audience and have a tangible effect on the world is what sets T. S. Eliot and The Wasteland apart, and truly gives his poetry the power to change the world.
The progression of the sun is used as a metaphor in the comparison of time’s effect on life, decay, and death, in order to show that through procrastination and neglect to live in the moment, the “sooner that his race be run, and nearer he’s to setting” (Herrick). Once again, the necessity for believing and participating in the concept of carpe diem perpetuates itself through the model of young love. Comparing this idea with the overarching theme of time’s inevitable passage, the speaker declares in the final stanza that “having lost but once your prime, you may forever tarry” (Herrick). With a focus on the physical, the entire process of decay here becomes a much more tangible subject to concentrate on, instead of a purely emotional outlook on
Academic Search Premier -. Web. The Web. The Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
Academic Search Complete. Web. The Web. The Web. 6 Feb. 2014.
Death is the primary theme in TS Eliot’s The Wasteland. Written just four years after the conclusion of World War I, The Wasteland mirrors the despair felt by much of the post-war generation. The poem begins with a section titled "Burial of the Dead." In this section Eliot deems April "the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." With these lines, Eliot suggests that springtime’s regeneration of life only causes people to remember what was lost in the past. Eliot again addresses death in the very next stanza:
In his poem "The Waste Land," T.S. Eliot employs a water motif, which represents both death and rebirth. This ties in with the religious motif, as well as the individual themes of the sections and the theme of the poem as a whole, that modern man is in a wasteland, and must be reborn.
The influence of World War I was also seen in Eliot’s work. According to Johnson, “…artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" (1922)” (1). Eliot’s writing in “The Waste Land” depicts scenes of war and also ties into the destruction of western culture.
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.
...to subjects relevant to today, such as religion.Eliot argues that without religion we are all lack direction and more importantly we lack substance in our lives. Without religion, we are superficial and it is due to this that we turn to pop culture. Pop culture is a filler for that which is intellectually rewarding. Eliot recognized this and for this reason he wrote “The Wasteland”. Eliot’s poem made bold statements about what was really happening in the modern world. Whether one argue with Eliot’s positions or not, his work joins the canon of the classic and ironically provides an opportunity for readers to plug into something greater.
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.
Academic Search Complete. Web. The Web. The Web. 10 Nov. 2013.