The document provides context and analysis of T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Waste Land". It discusses the biography of Eliot, key facts about the poem including its publication date and sections, important characters like Tiresias and Madame Sosostris, major themes of fragmentation and decay, and sources that influenced the poem's structure. The poem depicts post-World War 1 Europe as barren and depicts relationships and sexuality in a bleak manner through characters like the typist and her lover.

1. The Waste
Land
-By T.S.Eliot

2. Our team
Ridhdhi
Rathod
Rinkal
Dangar
Nirali
Dabhi

3. Key Facts
01
03
Table of contents
02
(About Author and
Text)
Context 04
06
Important
Characters
05 Major Themes
Plot Overview
Sources

4. Biography of Author
Thomas Stearns Eliot Om
Born : 26 September, 1888, St. Louis, missouri in
United States
Died : 4 January, 1965 London, United Kingdom
He was great poet , essayist, publisher, playwright,
literary critic and editor
Considered one of the 20th century's major poets he
is central figure in English language modernist
poetry.
Education : Harvard university in oxford
He was wins the nobel prize in literature 4 nov 1948.
He uses many Techniques such as imagism,
repetition, fragmentation, and other modern
Techniques.

5. ● Notable
works
● The Hollow men
● The Love song of J
Alfred
● Prelude
● Journey of the Magi
● Ash Wednesday
● Burnt Norton
● The waste land
● The play murder in
the cathedral
● Four Quartets
● Little Bidding
● East coker
● Common Themes of his
poetry
● Love
● Death
● Religion
● Nature
● Beauty
● Aging
● Desire
● Identity

6. About the text
Representative piece of 20th century published in book from 1922
most widely translated and studied English Language poem.
● 434 lines
Five parts :
● The Burial of the dead
● A Game of Chess
● The fire sermon
● Death by water
● What the Thunder said

7. Key Facts
Parts of Poem:-The Burial of the dead, A Game of Chess
The fire sermon, Death by water, What the Thunder said
Author:- T.S.Eliot
Publication Year:- 1922
Type of Work:- Long Poem
Genre:- Modernist poetry
Language:- English
Time and Place Written:- London in the after the First World War
Setting:- London
Protagonist:- Tiresias
Lines:- 434-line

8. Characters of Poem
★ Tiresias
★ Madame Sosostris
★ Phlebas
★ Mr. Eugenides
★ Philomela
★ A Typist Girl
★ Stetson
★ Belladonna
★ The Rich Lady
Tiresias
● The chief protagonist of The
Waste Land.
● According to Eliot is the central
figure in The Waste Land who
had spent seven years living as a
woman.
● Part-III- The Fire Sermon
● Historically he is Connection with
king Oedipus and His Waste
Land.

9. Madame Sosostris Mr. Eugenides
● A merchant from Smyrna (now
Izmir, in Turkey).
● This Character’s Reference saw in
Part- III “The fire of Sermon”.
● one-eyed merchant to whom
Madame Sosostris refers.
● His pocket is full of
currants.Currants are small,
seedless and dried grape.
● The merchant invites the narrator to
go with him to the Cannon Street
Hotel and the Metropole, a place for
homosexual tryst.
● Madame Sosostris is a gypsy who
tells fortunes at a fair.
● Fortune Teller - By Card
● The phrase “had a bad cold” was
meant for Madame Sosostris, and
it's in an ironic way.
● She is reading the fortune of the
protagonist, she doesn't know
the protagonist's real fortune.

10. Philomela
Phlebas
● A Phoenician merchant who is described lying
dead in the water in Part-4 "Death by Water."
Perhaps the same drowned Phoenician sailor
to whom Madame Sosostris refers.
● In death he has forgotten his worldly cares as
the creatures of the sea have picked his body
apart. The narrator asks his reader to consider
Phlebas and recall his or her own mortality.
● A character from
Ovid's
Metamorphoses.
● She was the Sister of
Procne, Procne’s
Husband name was
Tereus.
● She was raped by
Tereus, then, after
Philomela Converted
into Nightingle.
● Procne converted
into Swallow.
● Tereus converted
into Hawk/Eagle.

11. A Typist Girl The Rich Lady
● Lonely, a creature of the
modern world.
● She is Lover of "young
man carbuncular," who
sleeps with her
Mechanically.
● She is left alone again,
With her mirror and a
gramophone.
● Character saw in Part-
2 “A Game of Chess”
● She Called as The
Lady of Influence.
● This Character’s
Possibility as Eliot’s
first wife Vivienne.

12. Stetson Belladonna
● Eliot’s Friend
● He was Saw in Part I
“The Burial of Dead.”
● Believed that he was
fought in World war I.
● Part-1 Burial of Dead
● She called as Lady of
the Rock,Lady of
Situation,Very
Beautiful lady
● This Character is
Symbol of Poison,
Sexual and
Opportunities.

13. ● Title is taken from a book called (From Ritual
to Romance) by Jessie L.Weston.
● It focuses on the Grail legend and the Fisher
king whose infirmity affacts the fertility of the
kingdom itself and the land is doomed to
barrenness.
Title of the poem ‘The Waste land’

14. The poem has five different sections.
1. The Burial of the Dead,
2. A Game of Chess,
3. The Fire sermon,
4. Death by water and
5. What the thunder said.
Plot of the poem ‘The waste land’

15. ● The title refers burial service in the church
of England and dead fertility gods
mentioned in Frazer’s book,The Golden
Bow.
● Tiresias,the protagonist of the poem
represents Modern man.
● Spring as an awful season.
● Mari,the German princess,has entirely
forgotten religious and Moral values.
● Metropolitan city London or Paris to Madam
Sosostris,a fortune teller.
The Burial of the dead

16. A Game of Chess
● The longest section of the poem
● Title taken from two plays by early 17th
century playwright,Thomas Middleton.
● A Game of Chess denotes stage in seduction.
● Final repetition of ‘Good night’ by Lil is also a
reference to Ophelia of ‘Hamlet’.

17. ● It's title is chiefly reference to the Buddhist Fire
sermon.
● Eliot tries to show the modern World’s loveless
relationship and meaningless sex.
● Eliot tells about the unreal city, London whose
streets and rivers get polluted after Indusrialzation.
● Some lines are borrowed from The Enduring Mystery
of Psalm and ‘To his Coy Mistress (Truth about the
Death).
● Spencer - The Thames River.
● Augustine’s confession about the city Carthage.
● Narrator Tiresias from the Greek mythology
● “I Tiresias,though blind, throbbing between two
lives, Oldman with wrinkled female breast,can see”
The Fire sermon

18. ● Shortest part of the poem.
● Phlebas,the Phoenician who has died by
water.
● Significance of water as a means of
Purification and rebirth.
● Two associations,one from Shakespeare's
‘The Tempest’ and the other from the
ancient Egyptian myth of the God of Fertility.
● “Consider Phlebas who was once handsome
and tall as you”
Death by Water

19. ● Opening is taken from the
Crucifixion of Christ.
● Da Da Da - Datta,Dayadhvam
and Damyata-To Give,
Sympathize and to control.
● “He who was living is now dead,
We who were living are now
dying / With a little patience”
● “Shantih Shantih Shantih”
What the thunder said

20. ● I.A.Richards in ‘The principals of literary
criticism’,calls it ‘Music of ideas’.
● The structure of the poem is that of Spritual up and
down, through out the poem,we come back to the
same point but at different levels.
● Dante’s Dans le Restaurant.
● Jean Michel Rabate argues that “The waste land is
fundamentally a poem about Europe after the first
world war.
Structure of the poem

21. Fragmentation and decay:-
Enacted through the poem’s use of free verse (especially in ‘What the
Thunder Said’) and its references to ‘fragments’ and ‘broken images’.
Sex and relationships:-
Seen in the conversation in the London pub at the end of ‘A Game of
Chess’, the section describing the typist and ‘young man carbuncular’ in ‘The Fire
Sermon’, and the Earl of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth I (the ‘Virgin Queen’),
among others.
Rebirth:-
The Christ images in the poem, along with the many other religious
metaphors, posit rebirth and resurrection as central themes.
Themes of poem:-

23. Resources
● Eliot, TS. “The Waste Land Characters.” GradeSaver, 21 November 2022,
https://www.gradesaver.com/the-waste-land/study-guide/character-list.
● “The Symbolism of The Waste Land Explained – Interesting Literature.” Interesting Literature,
https://interestingliterature.com/2021/06/symbolism-of-the-waste-land-explained/.
● “The Waste Land Character Analysis.” Course Hero, 12 April 2019,
https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Waste-Land/character-analysis/.
● https://www.criticalbuzzz.co.in/critical-analysis-of-the-waste-lands-section-three-the-fire-
sermon/.
● https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section4/.
● Sri, P. S. “Upanishadic Perceptions in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Drama.” Rocky Mountain
Review, vol. 62, no. 2, 2008, pp. 34–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479528.
Accessed 14 Dec. 2022.
● Williamson, George. “The Structure of ‘The Waste Land.’” Modern Philology, vol. 47, no. 3,
1950, pp. 191–206. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/434823. Accessed 14 Dec. 2022.