Essays on The Waste Land

December 1922

T. S. Eliot

The Narrator, Madame Sosostris, Stetson, The Rich Lady, Philomela, A Typist, Mr. Eugenides, Phlebas

1922, by T. S. Eliot

Modernist poetry

The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations, in which vignettes of several characters address those themes experientially. "The Fire Sermon", the 3rd section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition, influenced by Augustine of Hippo and Eastern religions. After a fourth section, "Death by Water", which includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", concludes with an image of judgment.

The basic theme of The Waste Land is the disillusionment of the post-war generation and sterility of the modern man. The poem expresses with great power the disillusionment and disgust of the period after World War I. The depiction of spiritual emptiness in the secularized city is not a simple contrast of the heroic past with the degraded present; it is rather a timeless, simultaneous awareness of moral grandeur and moral evil.

The poem combines the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Dante's Divine Comedy, as well as Shakespeare, Buddhism, and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

The Narrator, Madame Sosostris, Stetson, The Rich Lady, Philomela, A Typist, Mr. Eugenides, Phlebas

The poem initially met with controversy as its complex and erudite style was alternately denounced for its obscurity and praised for its Modernism. It is considered one of the most influential works of the 20th century.

"April is the cruellest month"
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust"
“Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow”