The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot | In-Depth Summary & Analysis

[Music] TS Eliot's groundbreaking modernist poem The Waste Land draws its name from the earth Orion legend of the wounded Fisher King whose lands will rejuvenate when he is healed as well as other literary and philosophical sources referring to the physical and spiritual wasteland of modern society which has become corrupt and in need of healing in 1921 Eliot was still trying to find his way through the troubled disordered landscape of what was to become his most famous poem under the influence of his friend Ezra Pound the wasteland was crafted before we unpack the poem it's important to note the two key symbols that speak to the titular landscape itself the wasteland as symbolic language in the wasteland as sick or corrupt body for the former as signaled through both sound and image the wasteland symbolizes spiritual apathy and corruption derived in part from Arthurian legend the wasteland is more accurately a symbolic landscape that places a hero or series of heroes in conflict with natural and supernatural forces in Homer's Odyssey the protagonist spends many years roaming before he finds his way home encountering various monsters and storms along the way in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress the action is placed in a symbolic landscape where the topographical features represent evil corruption temptation and diligence faith and fortitude the dry stones arid country clutching roots dead trees absence of water and the relentless Sun are the key visual descriptions of the symbolic landscape all of the light coming through in this strange atmosphere is unnatural supernatural and unreal existing outside of physical laws the light seems artificial and the landscape seems dead this indicates a society lacking in energy and in need of rejuvenation the dead surroundings also seem to have deadened all the persona who inhabit the wasteland they are emotionless shells of people like voices caricatures or ghosts only the reader whose mind is traversing the landscape is alive in it this places the reader in the heroes viewpoints and the response to various stickles in the landscape allows the reader to gauge what kind of character they possess as for the latter symbol the wasteland and sick or corrupted body on another level the waste indicates a corruption an excess of energy or vitality that has made the body and spirit ill there are poisonous flowers Brown fog perhaps indicating poisonous error pollution rats and dead bodies the degree to which characters in the wasteland falter is registered through the many references to their blindness sickness and boredom the poems spiritual test which Elliott derived partly from the Grail quest is for the hero to overcome apathy to acknowledge his own illness in the first place only then can a healthy energy and calm be restored it could be argued that the wasteland dramatizes Eliot's illness and recovery where the poisonous corrupt and restless body of the first few sections finds peace and calm in the final section a letter Eliot wrote in December 1921 indicates that the therapy he was receiving helped him overcome his loss of the power of concentration and attention as well as his manner of becoming a prey to habitual worry and dread of the future as for the poem in part one the burial of the dead the speaker opens the poem by noting that April is the cruelest month pointing out how paradoxically life grows out of death the speaker is a key character who highlights the key themes in the poem and introduces all the other characters and speakers however this speaker is simultaneously difficult to distinguish from the other persona not the least because the lions often do not explicitly identify who is speaking for example while Part one opens with an almost conventional perspective on the cruelty of April it appears to introduce new speakers several times without any use of quotation marks or attribution it's so difficult to distinguish characters in this poem it could be argued that the speaker is also Madame Zaza stris Tiresias the Fisher King all of whom pop up in the poem among others the narration shifts to a lake near Munich Germany and to a speaker identified as Marie she tells of being surprised by the arrival of summer of enjoying coffee and conversation and then of a childhood memory of sledding in the mountains abruptly the perspective shifts to a description of the clutching and decrepit plant life in this dry environment here the Sun is unmerciful and the trees provide no shelter there is no water the perspective changes once again this time to a dialogue in which someone describes being given hyacinths another voice notes then upon returning from the hyacinth garden she was blind and could not speak next the speaker introduces Madame Sesostris a clairvoyant who has a pack of tarot cards and lays them out one after the other she's another key character through her tarot cards Madame Sesostris predicts many events and personages to come the Phoenician sailor appears on one of the cards she lays out here and that character later appears in part four the hanged man meanwhile is not found among the cards madame sousatzka slays out but considering this tarot card refers to the ancient fertility Rite of self-sacrifice he figures prominently whenever those themes are featured including references to fled us the Phoenicians the drowned sailor the Fisher King and the restoration of the wasteland she turns over a card for the speaker indeed it is the Drowned Phoenician sailor with pearls for his eyes the speaker says that she sees people walking in a circle finally the speaker describes a winter day in London and a long procession of people walking over London Bridge the speaker then meets a man the speaker knows and asks him a series of strange questions about a corpse planted last year in the man's garden will it bloom this year in part to a game of chess a woman sits on a chair that looks like a burnished throne its elaborately designed the woman sitting on a chair is one of the key characters in the poem and one who was ill or injured in some way she's described living in absolute luxury surrounded by perfumes and artwork strange patterns on the ceiling strange odors ornate artwork sculptures and furniture however she has a story to tell she has bad nerves gets no sympathy from her partner or lover and his witness to physical and spiritual corruption in the figure of Lille however she seems to show no sympathy for lille who suffers from some of those same problems as she abruptly the woman's hair spreads out in flames which form into words and the conversation continues the first speaker wants to go for a walk and then play a game of chess they are preparing for a knock upon the door then another conversation begins between the speaker and someone named lil whose husband Albert had been in the war the discussion includes warnings about Lil's declining looks and finances lil has had many children by Alberts but she tells the speaker that she's taking pills in order to have an abortion finally albert arrives home and the speaker gives farewells in part three the fire sermon the speaker describes a broken landscape everyone is left then describes how they sat down and wept with the sound of rattling bones nearby in an abrupt shift that speaker breaks into song then tells of mr. you-jin ADIZ a fig merchant from Smyrna who asks the speaker to lunch with him and then the speaker abruptly identifies himself as Tiresias who can see the lives of people including a sailor and a typist drying her undergarments Tiresias too is a central character he had spent seven years living as a woman and was asked to settle a bet for zeus and hera who experienced more sexual pleasure men or women after answering that women did Tiresias was instantly blinded by Hera but given the gift of prophecy by Zeus in a note to the poem Elliot said that Tiresias was the most important figure in the poem and that he United all the other characters here he will await and expect a guest who turns out to be a pimply Agents clerk the clerk sexually assaults the typist Tiresias explains that he has four suffered this experience the agents clerk then departs the woman is relieved that the ordeal is over and she puts a record on the gramophone the speaker describes mandolin music he hears beside a public bar on lower Thames Street fisherman lounge near a beautiful church along the river after that readers hear a series of songs about the river and nautical life drifting boats church bells and finally a dusty urban landscape the part ends with what sounds like a prayer or sermon in part for death by water in this short part the speaker tells of flemeth's the Phoenicians who a fortnight dead forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell and the profit and loss his drowned body is decomposing the speaker asks you who turned the wheel to consider fleebus who was once as and tall as you and in part five what the Thunder said the speaker refers to what has come before including fire I see silence and stony places and notes that this is a place with only rocks and no water and there is not even silence only dry sterile thunder without rain referring to someone wrapped in a cloak the speaker wanders about a third person that walks beside you this speaker describes the falling towers of Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London and he concludes unreal shifting again the speaker describes a woman with long hair who fiddled whisper music on those strings and bats and towers with tolling bells then tumbled graves in an empty Chapel the scene shifts to the Ganges River and the sound of thunder in a chanting tone the speaker repeats a series of almost fable like verses about the Thunder which leads to a sequence spoken by someone fishing it includes songs poetry in English Italian French and a final chant like closing as readers may have noticed ennui and promiscuity self-sacrifice and foresight and clairvoyance are the poems key themes Eliot was diagnosed with neurasthenia which was a medical condition believed to be a result of nervous energy and exhaustion from an overactive mind and a fast paced lifestyle so he can sympathize with the experience of ennui one of the symptoms of the condition the wasteland is filled with bored apathetic and physically drained people but ennui was often linked with sexual appetite in ways that were often uncomfortable to Eliot himself who in his early 20s experienced nervous sexual attacks Eliot was nevertheless traditional and respects to morals and sexuality his poem could be understood as the prescription for his own illness and that of his societies but Eliot was not simply targeting regular people many of whom were ill like him and victims of other people's promiscuous behavior in evoking the Arthurian legend and setting it in modern times he was offering a critical evaluation of the grand ideals of his own culture and that of wider Europe as for self-sacrifice it's appropriate that both the nervous energy and flattening apathy of the first three parts of the poem are replaced by a little in the 5th part in the wasteland Eliott champions a more generous unselfish alternative to the sexual predation and ennui that had affected and infected his society he included himself in the mix and his poem was intended as part of the cure moreover the antidote to ennui is self-sacrifice which is evoked through the many images of trial and tribulation the Cumaean Sibyl the hanged man and fled us the Phoenicians are notable instances of self-sacrifice as for foresight and clairvoyance numerous figures of prophecy appear throughout the wasteland indicating Elliott's fascination with clairvoyance insight and prophecy the Cumaean Sibyl offers the first instance of a seer or one who predicts events to come who also anticipates the appearance of other clairvoyance such as Madame Zaza stris and tiresias but the main speaker if the speaker is to be understood as omniscient is perhaps the central figure of foresight the main speaker controls all the events promises at various points to show various visions and demonstrates a great deal of patience in working with the ill nervous and bored persona that interrupts the speaker's message and in another sense foresight as part of Elliott's thematic representation of an author trying to control his own art as well as a patient looking for a cure you

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Keywords: poetry, the waste land (poem), modernism, ts eliot, eliot, t. s. eliot (author), wasteland, the wasteland, t.s. eliot, waste land, the wasteland ts eliot

Id: 26YCes_QsHw

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020