General Introduction
There is so much to write and debate about that I don't know where to start. The Waste Land is a grand poem carrying grand subject matters found within the famous epics most students of literature know about. My critical evaluation does not cover even the surface of the Waste Land. Therefore, I highly recommend you people to pour your heart into skimming through different researchers and material available online. Relevant links can be seen at the end of this write-up. Enough blabbering, let's visit the Waste Land!
The Waste Land is the flagship poem composed with a hard toil by the poet of tradition, TS Eliot. The poem was published in 1922. The Waste Land is considered to be one of the forceful poems of the twentieth century. The poem basically features the decline of the West in its tradition and its way of living. The poet shows his deep concerns that the people are losing what they struggled for centuries in the form of World Wars. The poem warns as thus,
I will show you fear in a handful of dust
Let's discover what exactly the poem shows in its development of situations.
Development of Situations
Yes, The Waste Land does not contain one particular situation. Rather it is a mixture of five different situations mixed up together strategically. The first one on the list is The Burial of the Dead. The poem begins on the note that Soring season is not a good time of the year. Then the poem suddenly travels into a memory of the childhood in which the narrator remembers a woman known as Marie. Then the poetic narration shifts towards a fortune-teller whose name is Madame Sosostris. Then continuous the section of A Game of Chess in which a room is seen, well decorated and a picture of the change of Philomel, a lady from Greek Mythology who was raped by the King Tereus and then she was changed into a nightingale. This section ends on two women, trying to get more drinks in the most common bar language.
The third section, The Fire Sermon opens upon a person standing beside the River Thames. He shows his concern that the world has lost its magic. Then we see the reference to Tiresias, a blind prophet who was turned into a woman by the goddess Hera for a period of seven years. Then Zeus gave him the ability to see the future of the world at the cost of his eyesight. He or she, tells us a scene of loveless love-making between a person and a woman. In the fourth section, Death by Water, we see a sailor whose name is Phlebas, sinking deep in the ocean.
The final section, What did the Thunder Said is the crux of the poem. In which Eliot shows his solution to the current problems of the world. This section begins on a land with no water. The two people are unaware of their presence as a person tries to see the other, the other person vanishes from the sight of the particular person. Then we hear the crackle of thunder suggesting three words from the Hindu mythology, "Datta, Dayadhvam, and Damyata" which mean "give", "sympathize", and "control" respectively. Then the poem ends on the word "Shantih" three times. (You already know what Shanti means so I don't have to give its meaning to you. :-D)
Themes
The Wasteland is, undoubtedly, a grand poem, featuring grand themes under its disposal. One of the prominent themes is the broken and isolated culture of the modern times. The world, especially the Western society was shaken up considerably after the horrors of World War First. The blaze of horror had swept their creative as well as socializing capabilities. Isolation became a norm because everyone was afraid of everyone. The poem hints at the very thing in its first section when a bunch of zombie-like people roam about without having a conscious relationship with their surroundings and the people around them.
The second prominent theme of this poem is death and rebirth. The poem is manifested in death. We see common examples of the corps of the people as the leftovers of many unfortunate events. The poem directly suggests that death is the ultimate fate of everything. But one thing to note here is that after the deadly season of winter comes spring, death results in a new birth with new ideas, perspectives as well as innovations. A common example inside the poem, suggesting the very theme is the fortune-teller, Madame Sosostris who issues a warning of the death by water. Another point to note here is that all the life on earth started in the form of tiny mutations inside the water billion years ago. Thereby, death by water can give rise to new mutations and thus, new species.
The third theme present in the poem is religious spirituality and nihilism. Eliot has added allusions to many cultures, from past and present. As for the religion, the poem focuses on three religions those are, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. While nihilism rejects the religious ideas and considers this world a meaningless heap of a "Waste Land". Although Eliot considers religious spirituality another reason of isolation in the modern world, but he finds the solution to modern isolation in religious spirituality as well. In the last section of the poem, Eliot explicitly considers giving up bad thoughts, sympathizing with the rest of the living beings and control over negative emotions, as the means of the redemption of the befallen society.
Figurative Analysis
This is a large poem. Therefore, it contains a great number of figurative devices waiting to be discovered and traced. Eliot has used similes to compare two objects. For instance, we see a comparison between the chair and a throne as well as waiting of a human engine like a taxi waiting for someone to get on board.
There are plenty of metaphors linked to other things inside the poem. The cruelty of April is a metaphor of the season of cruelty. The creeping rat is a metaphor of war and its disastrous aftermaths. The poem also boasts the use of personification through giving the human quality of the whining sound of a person to a musical note made by a mandolin. But the poem features irony when it declares the month of April, a cruel month. In reality, it is a pleasant month bringing about the soothing summer season. But, the poet calls it cruel because it brings back the cruel memories of the war.
Setting and Imagery
The setting of the Waste Land varies from section to section, scene to scene. For instance, in section 1, the setting abruptly changes from dead trees into a room in which a fortune teller is sitting. The images used in this poem are wordly visible. The images may include like, "pulling a long face", "The river’s tent is broken", "fishing in the dull canal", and "sound of horns and motors".
Structural Analysis
The poem is composed of 434 lines. It is divided into five sections which are devoid of proper stanza division. T S Eliot knowingly selected this unpatterned pattern to showcase the scattered but dismal atmosphere of his Waste Land. There are no proper rhyme schemes and rhythmic patterns, thus making this poem a perfect blank verse.
Conclusion
The Wasteland is truly a mini-epic depicting the major problem of mankind that is the decline of social as well as moral values, not specific to the West but prevalent in the East as well.
Sources and Suggested Readings
- https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/t-s-eliot/the-waste-land (This is a heavy page. Use a high-end desktop computer with a good internet connection to view this page. )
- https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/poetry/the-waste-land/summary
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land
- https://literarydevices.net/the-waste-land/
Please critical appreciation of sailing to Byzantium
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