The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

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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.

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