"The Waste Land" by T.S. Elliot

|Read the Poem | About the Author | Preface | Part I The Burial of the Dead | Part II A Game of Chess| Part III The Fire Sermon | Part IV Death by Water| Part V What the Thunder Said |

About the Author T.S Eliot

• Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888.
• He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University.
• In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate.
• After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914.
• The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.
• His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943)s.
• His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917.
• His books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940).
• Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.
• After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956.
• T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in London in 1965.

*The information and picture above is taken from: http://www.poets.org/poets/tseli

Interpretations

Preface

With my own eyes I saw the Sybil of Cumae hanging in a bottle; and when the boys said to her: "Sybil, what do you want?" she replied, "I want to die".

Part I The Burial of the Dead by Fatima

Stanza I (Lines 1-18)

    This poem starts off describing the month of April. The speaker is telling us that "April is the cruelest month, breeding- Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing". April symbolizes a stage of limbo. It is neither living nor dead. The speaker is retelling the first meeting she had with her lover. "Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee- With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,- And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,- And drank coffee, and talked for an hour." She then said "Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch." This means I'm not Russian, I'm German. This stanza then ends with her telling him her childhood stories. "And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,- My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,- And I was frightened, He said, Marie." It is here we discover her name is Marie and that she is an aristocrat. In this stanza, Eliot uses "Lilacs" color to symbolize death and the image "tuber" (flower bulbs) to indicate the world climate -a stage of inferno, which is also depicted by the season April. The first stanza of the poem contains a few romantic and beautiful imagery from the past, which will not again reappear in the rest of the poem. These past almost pastoral imagery serve as a sharp contrast to the horrifying images depicted throughout the rest of the poem-degenerating, destructive, decomposing and debilitating, which in result creates a very disturbing picture of the wasteland-the world we live in.

Stanza II( Lines 19--42)

    The second stanza is told from a soldier's point of view. This soldier maybe is Marie's lover. Note in Eliot's poem, speakers changes from stanza to stanza; from one part to the other. It's very difficult to determine who the speaker really is because it sounds like all men use one voice and the man can be someone from the ancient time( Phoenician sailor)  or a modern man (Mr. Eugenides). All women's voices sound similar too-Marie's voice could also be the typist voice in part III  or Queen Elizabeth's voice .

    Back to stanza 2. The soldier  is passing through the destroyed city buildings and churches that symbolize the destroyed western civilization as suggested in the lines, "A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,- And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,- And the dry stone no sound of water." Then he says, "Only there is shadow of this red rock", which indicates the barren and sterile situation of the modern world assimilating the primitive stage of our civilization-the Stone Age. He continues with "And I will show you something different from either- your shadow at morning striding behind you- or your shadow at evening rising to meet you", which shows his state of loneliness -in his horizon all he can view from morning to dawn is his shadow following him unblocked by any man-made objects. The land is a land of death and debris after the war. Any handful dust may contain human remains which he is fearful to touch, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust". Again he is telling us how destructive, frightening and catastrophic the war is.  Now while walking he remembers the love ballad that goes "Fresh blows the wind-to the homeland my Irish-darling where do you linger?" He is very homesick and wants to return to his love and home. He is just simply tired of the war and being so lonely. He continues to reminisce his romantic past with his girl and the garden scene where he had  a conversation with her. He says "Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not- Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither- Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,- Looking into the heart of light, the silence.- Desolate and empty the sea." These lines show how confused he was and also how incapable he was to feel or demonstrate his feeling.

Stanza III (Lines 43-59)

The speaker of this stanza is a soldier's wife. She has come to Madame Sosostris,a famous clairvoyante, to find out what might have happened to her loved one in the war. Madame Sosostris showed her cards that implied death, "Here is ...Your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,/(Those are pearls that were his eyes) indicating he has long been dead. She continues with other  cards that show imminent death, "Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,- The lady of situations. - Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,- And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,- Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see, I do not find- The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.- I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring."  It is obvious that many women came to see Madam Sosostris to find out about their lovers' fate.

Stanza IV (Lines 60-76)

This stanza starts off by describing London, the "Unreal City". The voice of this stanza could be Marie or any wife of a soldier. The image is that of the Infernal. "Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,- A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,- I had not thought death had undone so many." The image of the soldiers from the battlefield is horrifying," ...Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/And each man fixed his eyes before his feet", exhausted and confused. She follows the crowd through the city. "Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,- To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours- With a dead wound on the final stroke of nine." She just passed a church and heard the death toll. Then she sees a man by the name of Stetson. He says "You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!- That corpse you planted last year in your garden,- Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?- Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?" He was supposed to say flowers but instead he asks an absurd question," That corpse you planted last year in your garden,- Has it begun to sprout?" because he was so used to the term and image of death plus his confused state of mind. These few lines show his insanity or suffer mentally; they also symbolize death reproduces death. "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,- Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!- Hypocrite reader--my double,--my brother!" In these lines, his reference to the Dog is that all soldiers who died in the battlefield were murdered and their bodies will be dug up. The last line conveys his hatred for himself and sympathy for his enemies. In one word, It shows his resentment towards the war.

Part II A Game of Chess by Josefina

Part III The Fire Sermon (Lines 173-311) by Dominique

In the opening stanzas of Part III, Elliot is depicting the transition the world is experiencing. He uses images of the dead Earth with the bare trees and the empty spaces to convey the feeling of death being dominant and the vacancy it has left behind as seen in these lines, " The rivers tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf/ Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind/ crosses brown land unheard the nymphs have departed".  The city  has been deserted for some time and no human activities can be observed in town which is conveyed in these lines "The river bares no empty bottle sandwich papers. silk handkerchiefs...". Even the bank executives have left for good leaving no addresses.  Yet the departure was not by choice, for the majority,  it was against their will. The refrain "By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept .../ Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song , / Sweet Thames , run softly, for I speak not loud or long " creates a dominating sad mood of loss.  The "I" might be a survivor of the war or the legendary Fisher King, the symbol of life and regeneration the river god, who is lamenting over the desertion of the city the Thames. The line " The rattle of the bones and chuckle spread from ear to ear" personifies death and its contentment with its recent triumph.

The vast and empty land is home to scavenging rats, the only sign of movement on this place is the scuttling rats with dragging their slimy bellies on the river bank . The deserted land clad with deathly pale, dismembered corps and the memories of war. The " dull canal" indicates the loss of vitality represented by rivers and the dullness may be caused by pollution, or debris of the fallen buildings or dead bodies of those killed during the war. The allusion of " The sound of horns motors, which shall bring /Sweeny to Mrs. Porter in the spring " suggests that war is a trap where " brothers " may kill each other while they could have been friends or even relations. Mrs. Porter is compared to goddess Diana who has the power to turn Actaeon into a stag due to his stealthily observing nymphs bathe. Sweeny may be linked to Actaeon who is killed by his own hunting dogs . This reference suggest that when soldiers return home from the war to pursue their romance it will end up in self-destruction.  Elliot uses the war song that describes women washing their feet in the soda water to symbolize the alluring trap that will eventually kill them. The alluring trap is portrayed by the scene of women washing themselves , which can be interpreted as the promises made by the war leaders.

In lines 207-214, through the subtle use of s exual references such as hotels and sounds "Jug" "Tereu", Elliot conveys the idea of an inevitable end to mankind. Relationships between two people whether it is heterosexual or homosexual, lovers have no intentions of resulting in marriage or reproducing offspring . This description accents the idea of an infertile land- a theme that permeates throughout the entire poem.

In lines 215-256, the speaker is Tiresias, the famous Greek prophet, who can foresee everuthning coming even if he does not want to know. The agony is he can see every miseries happening and yet not able to change them like Sybil. Tiresia is described as a non-gender figure "Old man with wrinkled female breasts". Here he not only becomes the typist, the poor girl who has to prostitute to live, but he has to participate in the miserable behavior. She is so poor " On the divan are piled (at night her bed) /Stockings, slippers...". She displays no ability to make a decent living let alone to get married and have a family.  The arrogant tradesman wearing a "silk hat" come in and demands service from the girl. He did his sordid deed and left, "And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...". The speaker Tiresias who has "foresuffered all/Enacted on this same divan or bed;/ I who have sat by Thebes below the wall/ And walked among the lowest of the dead" from thousands of years ago in the ancient Greece is experiencing the same degenerating feeling- men and women bow to their sordid desire without love for each other. After the deed is done, the typist "smoothes her hair with automatic hand,/ And outs a record on the gramophone". No feelings are displayed. She is so numb and so used to it.

The music played by the gramophone brings us to a more serene and happy days as described in lines 257-266. The music travels and brings us to a public bar in Lower Thames street where "fishmen lounge" and listen to the play of mandolin while being surrounded by the splendid white and gold" walls  of the church Magnus Martyr.  Music is used to symbolize the past, the beautiful flowing waters, the sounds of the mandolin, the echo of voices amongst conversations and the bright colors that once draped every building have all become distant memories, all burnt away as the bodies and the building went up into flames.

The song that immediately follows brings us back to the grim present situation in which "river sweats/Oil and tar" and the barges drift...red sail...swing on the heavy spar, which symbolizes the danger it is in. The reference to the "Isle of Dogs" may infer the tragic ending of the barge. There are two places in the poem where the the reference of dog is used. One is the dog will dig out the dead body if the person is murdered; the other is that the dogs kill their own master Actaeon after he was transformed into a stag.

The next stanza of the song takes us to a scene where Queen Elizabeth and her lover Leicester are having a great time together. They boat they are rowing has "gilded shell/Red and gold". The boat sends ripples to the shore while you can also hear the church bells pealing celebrating their romance. We can also feel the dramatic effect  created by the chorus "Weialala leia" from Wagnar's opera. Even such a promising romance did not end up in marriage," I made no comment. What should I resent?...I can connect /Nothing with nothing./ The broken fingernails of dirty hands./ My people humble people who expect nothing." The dirty hands may indicate man's betrayal after Queen Elizabeth discovered Leicester's disloyalty. But she really had own reasons why she could not marry Leicester. She feels she belongs to her people.

The line "To Carthage then I came" comes from the voice of St. Augustine, the author of Confession. He seems to join the chorus and say ,"Come to join me to purify your soul, to rid of your troubles."

The lines "Burning burning  burning burning/O Lord Thou pluckest me out/O Lord Thou Pluckest me out" come from Buddists' voices that praises the belief : one must deny oneself and sacrifice one's own needs to receive salvation.

All the voices mingle together in the end creating an unbelievable sound effect that truly touch the reader's heart.

Part IV Death by Water (Lines 312-321) by Dominique

In this shortest part of the poem, the narrator uses Phleba, the Phoenician's story to convince us there will be no revival or resurrection after one's death.  Like Phlebas who once was successful and handsome now "a fortnight dead/ Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell/And the profit and loss". Now his bones are devoured by the ocean currents. Elliot uses water to represent the illusion of tranquility and the troubles one goes through in life. The quote " Picked his bones in whispers" expresses how ironic water can be, we believe it to be peaceful but we reluctantly accept its deadly side. This also shows the effect misconceptions have on one's judgment, our misconceptions of greed and values have buried us deeper as a whole into the whirlpool. The whirlpool with its constant currents is like a tomb we cannot escape no matter who you are. A very grim picture of the future.

Part V What the Thunder Said ( Lines 322-433) by Dominique

 In the opening stanzas (Lines 323-345) , Eliot depicts a vivid image of the wasteland where the "the only frosty silence exits in the gardens; no water but only rock... Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit." The personified mountain symbolizes nature which usually has the power to regenerate itself now is dead, which reminds us of the drying-up Fisher King. The hope indicated is almost invisible as stated, "dry sterile thunder without rain". Rain symbolizes hope. The red sullen faces "sneer and snarl" remind us of animals who are frustrated and intimidated and ready to attack. Could this imply that humans have lost their ability to verbally communicate with each other but "sneer and snarl"?  The "mudcracked houses" also give the impression of humans before we reached the civilization. 

In lines 359-365), the voices asks," Who is the third who walks always beside you?... Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded/I do not know whether a man or woman...". The answer is "death". Elliot gives readers the impression that after all the troubles we go through in life ,all we have to look forward to is death because it is what is at the end of everyone's road. The images of the deserted lands and the roaring clouds with the sound of possible rain is  used to symbolize the dim hope people have to go through this darkness.  Death has attached itself to you waiting for you at the  most vulnerable moment waiting for the opportunity to strike. Death is a constant reminder to these people so they have lost their will to go on and try to change their lives.

The constant death causes mothers to cry and their crying echoes high in the air. Every person is a child to a mother and every loss is mother's loss. Through the image depicted in lines 366-376,"...hordes swarming/Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth/Ringed by the flat horizon only...". The world has been flattened leaving no trace of civilization. Cities were built, destroyed, rebuilt and redestroyed as stated, "Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air/ Falling towers/Jerusalem Athens Alexiadria/Vienna London" -the major cities in the western civilization are being destroyed.

"A woman drew her long black hair out tight" indicates the infertility of motherhood while the mother earth is drying up with no mountains "spitting" water and "empty cisterns and exhaustive wells".

Lines 377-384 depict  an unforgettable picture  of a woman with her long black hair drawn tightly and the violin playing the saddest song represents the changing role of the woman: she is no longer seen in the light of a maternal figure rather  she is alone playing her sad tune with the voices of the dead ,the fluttering of the bats wings and the tolling of the bells to accompany her. Such a heart-wrenching scene!

The land is now covered with troubled graves. The churches have become empty and the only visitors are  the ghost and the wind, " ...empty chapel, only the wind's home./...Dry bones can harm no one...". The crowing of the cock at the morning's sun symbolizes the dim hope illustrated through " A flash or lightning. Then a damp gust bringing rain" .

In the last few stanzas of the poem, T.S. Elliot turns towards the eastern cultures  and their ideals to seek a solution to all these pending issues in the western world. He alludes to what the Eastern Thunder God said to hint at  solutions-

Datta (give):  he states that we all surrender  own desires impulsively; our actions are without prudence.  We spend so much time and energy on self-serving needs  but none of these needs are substantial in our life. Like that of man's need to fulfill his s exual desire of being with a woman. They need not feed into this idea because when they are gone, it will only be a matter of time before she moves on "...Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider/Or under seals broken by the lean solicito/In our Empty room...". We constantly take and that only builds up the greed we have in ourselves ; while by giving we eliminate the hatred that is burdening us and causing so much damage. Give may be the only cure to self-destruction.

Dayadhvam (sympathize): mankind has become so busy and occupied with dealing with our own problems and seeking solutions that we show no compassion when others are in need as suggested in ,"We think of the key,each in his prison/Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison...". Elliot refers to Coriolanus who was abandoned by all of his "friends" when he needed their support the most, to support the theme that a stressful times will test a human's true spirit.

Damyata (control):  Life is like an open sea, at times it can be choppy and out of order and at other times it can be calm and tranquil. You serve as the sail and the oar of your ship when you take responsibility and make the correct choices you chose how to handle the situation no matter how obscure the currents are flowing. When one is in control of their life, he/she then can experience true happiness as stated in ," The sea was calm, your heart would have responded/Gaily, when invited, beating obedient/To controlling hands".

In lines 423-426, the voice is that of the Fisher King's. He "sat upon the shore/Fishing, with the arid plain behind me/Shall I at least set my lands in order". The legendary Fisher King, who symbolizes fertility and vitality,  seems to have come to terms with reality-accept it and do what you can to fix it. Elliot may also use this reference to show we all need to give up our desires to fulfill our superficial needs. Stop being so needy and greedy. Be realistic and self-content. The Fisher King retreats from trying to revitalize his rivers rather  he will organizes what he already has on his plate even they are just chaotic fragments. This conveys the idea of compromise and acceptance .

Through the chanting of children's rhymes and fragments from other poems and plays in Latin and French, Elliot indicates the world is existing in fragments. Eliot also suggests that people can use these fragments to rebuild or protect themselves from the obstacles thrown at them, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins". The allusion to Hieronymo ,who waited patiently before seeking opportunities to revenge, may imply that we all should  wait patiently for new opportunities to come, and be prepared when they arrive.

The closing  "Shantih, shantih, shantih" are eastern words that suggest we gain peace by giving up our needs ,by reconciliation with the world, and by creating a Zen state of mind . Only in this way the world can be in peace. If people can maintain this, the end result would be fertility of our land again.

Bibliography for the illustration

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/ww2/wasteland.jpg
jodorowski.free.fr/paysage/ explosion.jpg
www.pixelcraft.com.au/alchemy/ nigrido/nigrido.htm
victoriansatwar.net/archives/ archimg2.html
http://www.gamepartisan.com/sony/reviews/Disgaea/Wasteland.jpg