T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland
In T.S. Eliot’s most famous poem The Wasteland, a bleak picture of post-war London civilization is illuminated. The inhabitants of Eliot’s wasteland are living in a morally bankrupt and spiritually lost society. Through fragmented narration, Eliot recalls tales of lost love, misplaced lust, forgone spirituality, fruitless pilgrimages, and the “living dead”- those who shuffle through life without a care. These tales are the personal attempts of each person to fulfill the desires which plague them, though none ever stop to consider that what they want may not be what they need, nor do they consider why it is they feel they must do these things. Through studies in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective
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It is not, however, a reasonable excuse for their actions. As Jean-Paul Sartre states in his essay “The Humanism of Existentialism,” “Man is nothing, but what he makes of himself” (36). Under such a view the inhabitants, and humanity in general, are completely responsible for the choices they make and the state of affairs they find themselves in. It is not enough for them to just do whatever they feel like doing. Humanity must go further and we must know that we are making an active choice and will be forced to live with the consequences of such a decision. There is, yet, one more way to look at the actions and decisions of humanity. In The Ethics of Sex, Mark Jordan states, “[One] require[s] rather a persuasion to change his actions” (55). What this means is that, in order to make a big change to the corrupt way we are living, humanity must see the consequences of our actions. Right now we have not see enough reaction or negative consequences and without that, humans will continue to go for the easiest search and not work toward something we actually need. However, Jordan believes that this change will come by something God does, but this is not the way that people will find change. Instead, we must look within ourselves, not at outside forces, such as God, to find a reason to change. Otherwise humanity will continue the mistaken searches and never find the fulfillment needed.
One of the most obvious ways that the
Elliot’s “The Waste Land.” Each author highlights the meaning of rivers; Crane begins with the East River, which then grows into the Hudson and onto the Mississippi and Eliot with the River Thames. To each author the river has a distinct meaning. To Eliot, the River Thames is symbolic of the collapse of western civilization, which doesn’t factor into Crane’s piece. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot-like most British poets-immortalize the Thames. Despite how he depicts this, in the modern world it is just a dirty river. Eliot’s background causes him to symbolize the Thames differently than a reader would in the U.S. Similarly, a reader outside of the U.S. will symbolize the East, Hudson, and Mississippi Rivers completely different than Crane and other Americans. Foster believes that the connection in how one interprets a symbol, and their personal background goes hand in hand. Otherwise, everyone would connect the Thames to Eliot’s beliefs, or the Mississippi and Hudson according to Crane’s ideas. Rather Foster believes that it is important for a reader to have the freedom to interpret the text
American born poet, T.S. Eliot reflects modernistic ideas of isolation, individual perception and human consciousness in his many poems. His poems express the disillusionment of the post–World War I generation with both literary and social values and traditions. In one of Eliot’s most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was published in 1915, a speaker who is very unhappy with his life takes readers on a journey through the hell he is living in. In this journey, Prufrock criticizes the well-dressed, upstanding citizens who love their material pleasures more than they love other people, while explaining he feels ostracized from the society of women. Eliot’s use of isolation, human consciousness and individual perception is quite evident in his dramatic monologue within the story of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock wants to be seen as a normal citizen who can find friends or a lover, but his anxiety-driven isolation forces him to live a life that relates more to Hell than paradise. In over examining every fine detail of his life, Prufrock perceives himself as useless and even a waste of life. By using many poetic devices including repetition, personification, and imagery Eliot drives readers to feel the painful reality of Prufrock’s life. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot uses modernistic ideas and poetic devices to portray how Prufrock’s life relates to Hell while simultaneously criticizing social aspects of the younger post–World War I generation.
Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.
For years, post-modern writers have foreshadowed what the end of the world would look like through dramatic representations in literary works. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx & Crake, are no exception to this. Delving into the complexities that underlie man’s existence on Earth, these authors use their novels as vehicles to depict a post-apocalyptic world, in which all that once was is reduced to an inconceivable wasteland, both figuratively and literally.
T.S Eliot’s famous poem The Waste Land depicts society as being a part of an unfruitful cycle. “Human beings are isolated, and sexual relations are sterile and meaningless” [The Wasteland; http://www.vanderbilt.edu]. In one excerpt from the poem “presents the voice of a countess looking back on her pre-World War I youth as a lovelier, freer, more romantic time. Her voice is followed by a solemn description of present dryness when "the dead tree gives no shelter." [The Wasteland; http://www.vanderbilt.edu]. In the novel, Shep contemplates death “Was failure inevitable and tragic? Or merely the biggest and last of the bad breaks? Would death, like the unfinished manuscript—another broken promise—be the final symbol?” [Ch. 24] The Wasteland has a
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock” may be accurately described as an amalgam of synergistic emotions—among them self-doubt, longing, fear, regret, and indecisiveness—which, through the alchemy of poetry, work in tandem to create and communicate an overwhelming sense of anxiety. These emotions serve as cataracts upon the lens through which the poem’s narrator views both himself and the city streets he travels. Overwhelmed by an “overwhelming question” (10) the narrator—perhaps more terrified by the sheer gravity of the “overwhelming question” (10) than the numerous other fears and self-doubts the narrator presents to the reader—never unequivocally specifies, the poem’s persona makes a journey through both city and mind to
T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is a broad allegory for trying to find deliverance in a landscape reminiscent of purgatory. Eliot provides examples of allusion and imagery to describe a fully realized apocalyptic scenario that affirms the hopelessness of people vacant in spirit. The poem is in five sections, narrated by the forsaken hollow men. The speakers are a paradox—stuffed with straw and empty at the same time.
Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, is a journey through the arid, unproductive modern world. This poem was written post World War I when the world was still recovering. Evidence of the war could still be seen. The ground was still battle worn, and man still broken of spiritual guidance. This current state of being is what fueled Eliot’s writing. Through the poem, he connects the conditions of modern society to an infertile world void of water and spirituality. Despite the desert-like setting, there are countless images of water throughout the writing with numerous ways to illustrate them. Water plays many roles in the poem as we see its raw power. It can hurt as well as help. There is also fear of too much or too little. The portrayal of the water shows similar qualities to that of spirituality. The poem links them together to almost flow in the same manner. Water in The Waste Land can then be symbolized to a god-like figure; being the bringer of birth, fertility, death, and resurrection – hope.
Cooperation is the key to human survival, and over time humans have been known to group together to survive. This strategy has allowed humans to develop massive cities and countries of immense power. Without the natural instinct to cling to one another, humans would not be as advanced as they are today, and may not have even made it out of the caves. Many authors display our natural instinct to cooperate in their works, allowing the characters to become more real to the readers.
T.S. Eliot in the twentieth-century wrote what is today widely-regarded as one of the most important text of modernist poems, “The Waste Land.” This poem evaluates many aspects of ancient and contemporary culture and customs, and how the contemporary culture has degraded into a wasteland. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot conjures, through allusions to multiple religions and works of literature in five separate sections, a fragmented and seemingly disjointed poem. Eliot repeatedly alludes to western and eastern cultural foundation blocks to illustrate the cultural degradation prevalent in the modern era of England. One specific eastern example is brought up in the third section of the poem, which T.S. Eliot names “Fire Sermon,” an allusion to
This reinforces Eliot's claim that, 'Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood'. The theme's that run throughout 'The Wasteland', such as sterility, isolation and death, are applicable to both the landscapes and the characters. When drawn together, it is these themes that give the poem structure and strength, and the use of myth mingled with historic, anthropological, religious and metaphysical images reinforce its universal quality.
The wasteland can be regarded as one of T.S Elliot`s most compelling work. Ezra Pound once said that Elliot`s wasteland is the “justification of the movement of our modern experiment since 1900”. His poem describes the vision of modern life while focusing on modern culture and its lack of tradition and rituals. Elliot`s poem describes his experiences of the first world war and his own personal works. Elliot studied at Harvard and Oxford and then moved to London. Elliot depicts modern times and show that worry`s become an important factor in literature. Elliot`s images throughout the Wasteland is understandable in a time when religion and culture had declined “in the hands of rapid change of both social and technological in every sphere of human
In this discussion of Eliot’s poem I will examine the content through the optic of eco-poetics. Eco- poetics is a literary theory which favours the rhizomatic over the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will provide the overarching structure for this essay. Firstly rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of significant motifs in ‘The Waste Land.’ Secondly they grow and spread, via experimentation within a context. This will be reflected in the study of the voice and the language with which the poem opens. Thirdly rhizomes grow and spread regardless of breakage. This will allow for an