The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

1
The Waste Landby T.S. Eliot

• Adela, Erica and Hilda

2
Synopsis

• 433 lines
• 20th Century
• Meditation on the state of Western civilization
• mixes descriptions of contemporary life with
  literary allusions and quotations, religious
  symbolism, and references to ancient and medieval
  cultures and mythologies, vegetation and
  fertility rites

3
Synopsis

• Eastern religions and philosophies
• emphasize themes of barrenness and desolation and
  portrays a dying society
• the ending suggests hope of redemption through
  concepts and images grounded on the synthesis of
  Christian and Eastern (Hindu/Buddhist)
  spirituality

4
Language Form

• Modernist poetry. Irregular verse, at times free,
  at times reminiscent of the blank verse of
  Eliots plays
• The poem was reduced to half the length of
  earlier drafts at Ezra Pound's suggestion
• Complex scholarly annotations to explain the many
  quotations and obscure allusions
• Five sections and features multiple voices and a
  deliberate attempt at creating a sense of
  fragmentation, discontinuity, and decay.

5
Structure

• Epigraph
• Five sections
• The Burial of the Dead
• A Game of Chess
• The Fire Sermon
• Death by Water
• What the Thunder Said

6
Epigraph

• "Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
  vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri
  dicerent Sibulla ti qeleiz respondebat illa
  apoqanein qelw."
• For Ezra Pound
• il miglior fabbro.

• Quotes Petronius's Satyricon (first century
  C.E.)
• For once I myself saw with my own eyes the
  Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the
  boys said to her Sibyl, what do you want? she
  replied, I want to die.

7
I. The Burial of the Dead (1/2)

• Four poems
• Line 1-18
• Marie recalls her sledding and claims that she is
  German, not Russian. The woman mixes a
  meditation on the seasons with remarks on the
  barren state of her current existence.
• Line 19-42
• A prophetic, apocalyptic invitation to journey
  into a desert waste, where the speaker will show
  the reader something different from either/ Your
  shadow at morning striding behind you/ Or your
  shadow at evening rising to meet you/ He will
  show you fear in a handful of dust.

8
I. The Burial of the Dead (2/2)

• Four poems
• Line 43-59
• It describes an imaginative tarot reading, in
  which some of the cards Eliot includes in the
  reading are not part of an actual tarot deck.
• Line 60-76
• The speaker walks through a London populated by
  ghosts of the dead. He confronts a figure with
  whom he once fought in a battle. The speaker asks
  the ghostly figure, Stetson, about the fate of a
  corpse planted in his garden.

9
II. A Game of Chess

• This section focuses on two opposing scenes high
  society and the lower classes.
• Two poems
• Line 77-138
• A wealthy, highly groomed woman surrounded by
  exquisite furnishings.
• Line 139-172
• In a London barroom, where two women discuss a
  third woman.

10
III. The Fire Sermon (1/3)

• Taken from a sermon given by Buddha in which he
  encourages his followers to give up earthly
  passion and seek freedom from earthly things.
• Four poems
• Line 173-206
• Line 207-214
• Line 215-265
• Line 266-311

11
III. The Fire Sermon (2/3)

• The section opens with a desolate riverside
  scene Rats and garbage surround. The speaker,
  who is fishing and musing on the king my
  brother's wreck.
• The speaker is then propositioned by Mr.
  Eugenides, the one-eyed merchant of Madame
  Sosostris's tarot pack.

12
III. The Fire Sermon (3/3)

• The speaker then proclaims himself to be
  Tiresias, a figure from classical mythology who
  has both male and female features and is blind
  but can see into the future.
• Tiresias/the speaker observes a young typist, at
  home for tea, who awaits her lover, a dull and
  slightly arrogant clerk. The woman allows the
  clerk to have his way with her, and he leaves
  victorious.
• Tiresias, who has foresuffered all, watches the
  whole thing. After her lover's departure, the
  typist thinks only that she's glad the encounter
  is done and over.

13
IV. Death by Water

• The shortest section of the poem.
• Describes a man, Phlebas the Phoenician, who has
  died by drowning.
• In death he has forgotten his worldly cares as
  the creatures of the sea have picked his body
  apart.

14
V. What the Thunder Said (1/2)

• One poem line 322-423
• Builds to an apocalyptic climax, as suffering
  people become "hooded hordes swarming" and the
  "unreal" cities of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria,
  Vienna, and London are destroyed, rebuilt, and
  destroyed again.
• The scene then shifts to the Ganges, half a world
  away from Europe, where thunder rumbles.

15
V. What the Thunder Said (2/2)

• Finale line 424-434
• Ends with a series of disparate fragments from a
  children's song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan
  drama, leading up to a final chant of Shantih
  shantih shantih.

16
Theme

• source

17
I. The Burial of the Dead

• Theme
• Inhabitants in the Waste Land live a hopeless
  life. People can usually obtain salvation
  (rebirth) from the burial of the dead, but
  inhabitants in the Waste Land are afraid of
  rebirth.

18
II. A Game of Chess

• Theme
• The community's impotence and degradation, sex
  and spirit, is conveyed.

19
III. The Fire Sermon

• Theme
• Eliot uses St. Augustine and Buddhas thoughts
  to teach man to keep away from decay.

20
IV. Death by Water

• Theme
• There will be no revival or resurrection after
  the Phoenicians death. Misunderstanding of
  greed and values have buried human beings deeper
  as a whole into the whirlpool.

21
V. What the Thunder Said

• Theme
• The thunder said human beings could be saved
  through three verbs--give, sympathize, and
  control.

22
Analysis (1/2)

• Eliot uses
• A modern myth that world moving toward crisis and
  chaos
• Multiple narrators to see from different angles
• Dramatic monologue to convey the characters
  stream of unconsciousness and psychological
  condition.
• Fragmentation fragmentation of modern life,
  lack of integration in the modern experience

23
Analysis (2/2)

• Allusion to plays, and myths
• To compare and contrast the present and the past
• To produce the dramatic irony
• (Myths exists in fertility rites and a
  universal subconscious. Eliot uses myths to
  produce sympathy. )
• Biblical references
• severed from the system of belief that gave
  them coherence and meaning.

24
Techniques in Text

• Dramatic monologue (L818, L2530)
• Allusions to the Bible (L20), plays (The Tempest,
  The Devils Law Case), and myths (The Fisher
  King, Inferno)
• Fragmentary formsEx. broken image (L22)(L428-30)
• Symbols of water, hyacinth, the Tarot pack of
  cards, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, the Hanged
  God.
• Compare and Contrast---Mylae War is compared to
  the World War I.
• QuotationsParadise Lost9 (IV, 140), The Devils
  Law Case (III,ii,162), The White Devil (V,6,
  203-205), Confession
•  punjug (L103)

25
Epigraph

• to express the subject
• Sibyl in the Satyricon (myth) , a woman with
  prophetic power and long life, grows old, but
  cannot die. She is yearning to die.
• The Sibyl's condition suggests Eliot lives in a
  culture that has decayed and withered but will
  not end.

26
Quotation And Interpretation

• L1-7
• APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding
  Winter kept us warm, covering
• (The Waste Land opens with a compare to
  Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. April is not the
  painful month for pilgrimages and storytelling.)
• L30
• I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
• (How dry and fearful the Waste Land it is. )

27
Quotation And Interpretation

• L55
• The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
• (The death and rebirth of a god Rebirth
  comes after the death. And water suggests
  spiritual renewal.)

28
Quotation And Interpretation

• L99-103
• The change of Philomel, by the barbarous
  king'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.
• (People only can hear the sex and violence in
  the myth but not appreciate a myth.)
• L126
• 'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in
  your head?'
• (Inhabitants in the Waste Land are without
  thoughtsspiritual dryness.)

29
Quotation And Interpretation

• L48
• Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!
• L257
• This music crept by me upon the waters
• (Quoted from Shakespeares The Tempest
  sea-change is the symbol of refreshment and
  purification. And the Waste Land is a place that
  is lack of water.)

30
Quotation And Interpretation

• L329 We who were living are now dying
• (People have no belief. Religion doesn't
  exist for them.)
• L423-25 I sat upon the shore Shall I at least
  set my lands in order?
• (In the myth of the Fisher King, the king is
  impotent and the land is barren society waits
  for salvation in the person of a knight (looking
  for the Holy Grail) who will come and ask the
  right question and bring the much-needed rain.)

31
Study Questions

• What is the function of the epigraph in the
  beginning to the poem?
• Is the downward motion significant in the first
  section?
• What does the thunder say? What is happening to
  the waste land?
• What is the "Waste Land" Eliot describes?

32
Study Questions

• Why T.S. Eliot chose the A Game of Chess as the
  title of the second part of the work? Whats the
  connection of this section with previous one?
• What the representative meaning of water in the
  fourth part of the work?

33
References

• Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta's World Literature
  Website. 1 Dec. 2005 lthttp//fajardo-acosta.co
  m/worldlit/eliot/waste_land.htmgt.
• Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "The Waste Land." The
  Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed.
  M.H. Abrams. 7th ed. Vol. 2. New York Norton,
  2000. 2368-83.
• Modernist Poetry in English. 4 Dec. 2005
  lthttp//www.answers.com/topic/modernist-poetry-in
  -englishgt.
• Parker, Rickard A. Exploring The Waste Land. 29
  Sep. 2002. 5 Dec. 2005 lthttp//world.std.com/r
  aparker/exploring/ thewasteland/explore.htmlgt.
  
• SparkNotes Eliots Poetry. 1 Dec. 2005
  lthttp//www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/index.htm
  lgt.
• The Waste Land. 1 Dec. 2005
  lthttp//www.geocities.com/ Athens/Olympus/5599/l
  iterature/wasteland.htmlgt.
• The Waste Land Interpretation. 5 Dec. 2005
  lthttp//www.tqnyc.org/NYC040522/Poetryindexbyjose
  fina/was telandindex.htmgt.