Class notes.

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T. S. Eliot 1888-1965
American poet who lived in England and got the British citizenship in 1927 , and became
an Anglo-American modern poet.
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He published The Waste Land motivated by several reasons:
1. WWI, the poem is a reflection of the situation in Europe in the aftermath of WWI.
2. the changes of the modern world: materialism.
3. the spiritual vacuity, moral deterioration, fragmentation, division, isolation,
alienation, and estrangement.
4. the choice of modern man to separate himself from the past: tradition. And in Eliot’s
essay “tradition and the individual talent” he criticised this breaking away from the
rules whether related to creation or spiritual values.
The Waste Land paved the way for the Theatre of the Absurd:
• Failure of language
• lack of knowledge and understanding
• failure of memory: repeating questions
• meaninglessness and nothingness
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Due to the theory suggested by the “formalists” or the neo-critics of modern time and
the theory of objectivism, many readings of The Waste Land were avoiding to touch on the
personal life of Eliot or to use the psychoanalytical approach. Except in the late 20th
century. That’s because of Eliot’s objective approach and denial of the relation between
the life of the poet and the text made critics avoid relating any details from his life to his
text. However, if we apply a psychoanalytical reading on the Waste Land we’ll find that he
used his experiences and the knowledge he had through contact with friends and wife.
For example, Eliot’s nervous breakdown condition which he was sent to a clinic in
Lausanne in Switzerland to be under supervision. The place “Lausanne” is mentioned in
the poem for the same reason, to get some relaxation to the troubled mind. Also, when he
spoke about his marriage he said that he couldn’t find any kind of happiness in it. He said
“I was brought to a state of mind that produced The Waste Land.” Furthermore, his wife
was mentally ill and he faced a lot of trouble trying to treat her. Therefore, the
unhappiness, the troubled mind, the hysterical women in the poem are identified by the
critics as part of his real life.
But that doesn’t mean that the poem is totally personal. He just made use of personal
experiences to reflect on what’s going on at his time because it was part of what results
everywhere around him.
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The poem was received with hostility by critics and reviewers, because it was shocking
and surprising to everyone. Because of it’s form + and content. The form was surprisingly
different than any other poem at that time. Shockingly different coming from T. S. Eliot, the
tradition defender. But Eliot knew the time very well and knew that traditional structure will
not be suitable to the content that he was going to speak about. And his choice was a
successful one as proved by later critics who started to appreciate the lack of coherence of
the text and believing that this lack of coherence and fragmentation are part of the
meaning of the poem.
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The poem is considered as an open-ended poem. That it has no conclusion or
resolution. Some critics say that this poem end where it started, with the same pessimism,
with the same note of anger and disappointment, and nothing changes. However, the
answer is that it’s an inaccurate comment because if you dig deep in the text you’ll find
that there’s a development , maybe incomplete, but it’s a development. It doesn’t reach a
clear conclusion but this—as post modern critics point out— is the proper clever poem that

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leaves it up to the mind of the read to choose the conclusion of the text. Besides,
realistically, Eliot was documenting a period of time where he saw deterioration, corruption,
and chaos. And nothing at that time went back to order so he cannot suggest uniformity
after chaos since it didn’t take place. All what he did, in the development of the text, is
showing the key to a resolution and change. So the solution is suggested but it doesn’t
actually take place. And this is only normal because the poem isn’t offering something that
doesn’t exist at his time. {Dante’s "Divine Comedy”}
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The Waste Land was Published in 1922
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Waste: sterile, dry, poor land.
The title is indicative of the content.
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(Why the poem did not loose its glamour?)
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Both The Waste Land and the Second Coming reflect on the world after WWI.
Both Yeats and Eliot are contemporary and they criticise the modern world with all its
deterioration and changes to the worse.
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The inhabitants: are described as ghosts, bodies moving in the streets of London. For
they lost their identity, intellectual powers, and spiritual values. They became nothing.
Shades moving in the streets of London aimlessly, with different voices and
languages. Gothic element.
[Gothic element: origin + definition + stylistics features]
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He’s describing this fragmented, divided, and chaotic society, anarchy, deterioration,
alienation, astrangment, intellectual and physical failure, dryness, sterility. All these
features have to presented in a suitable way. A form that is suitable to the content.
Therefore, The Waste Land is presented in what APPEARS to be fragmented structure.
However, if you dig deep in the poem you’ll find that the details of the text relate. It’s not a
fragmented text, rather it’s a fragmented technique. This structure is also called the
cinematic technique and the stream of consciousness. [kaleidoscopic structure with
different layers of meanings and themes]
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How does fragmentation work in the poem? and why is it essential to Eliot?
1. it’s suitable to the conditions in which he writes the poem. That is broken society,
broken relationships, broken knowledge that he’s discussing in the text.
2. it’s deconstructing the reader’s familiar context. He wants to shock them with a new
structure that’s surprising and this is the gothic effect.
3. it’s deconstructing the old images, believes and philosophy as some of the allusions
do.
4. All good poets have the aim to trigger the reader’s mind to think, to seek meaning,
to reevaluate, and to raise their sense of wonder and surprise by the use of
paradoxical language, juxtaposition, and saying the common in an uncommon
way. And fragmentation helps--through the stream of consciousness, flashbacks,
the cinematic montage—to bring back memories from past stories or plays or songs
to present. And showing that memory fails.
5. it reflects the fragmented minds of the inhabitants. The failure to think, to speak, to
hold a conversation. All what you hear in the poem are hallow talks because they’re
a result of a fragmented mind that’s incapable of thinking nor linking details
together. Memory fails > therefore language fails, it’s a situation of absurdity.
#Meaninglessness nothing makes sense.

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6. the poem is a quest for rebirth, regeneration, and identity. There’s a fractured sense
of identity prevailed after WWI.
In the dialogue, the linguistic structure reveals the fragmented mind by showing how they
fail to communicate. Broken physically and mentally. Broken relations. Broken society. {"a
heap of broken images #22” link this line to the ending “these fragments I have shored
against my ruins #431"}
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Why did Eliot take snapshots from all over the world and combined them together?
He believes as a critic, a poet and an artist that a text is the result commutation of ideas,
knowledge, and information. Moreover, that is why he’s interested in tradition; because the
information and knowledge come from the past, what has been written before. He
believes that evaluating or appreciating an artist comes by comparing him/her to others. To
determine whether s/he’s a contributor or innovative not imitator, you have to compare
and contrast with other artists.[a poet cannot stint alone, he’s to be appreciated amongst
others and the best of his poetry is when the dead poets appear—through allusions or
cross-references--] comparing is the key for criticism.
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Allusions are very important, the whole text is built on allusion. Cross-references are
necessary because (a) good poetry is a cumulation of knowledge and experience. They
should be used in a clear and unique manner to give new meanings and to juxtapose the
situation.
(b) Allusions help to juxtapose the situation of what used to be and what is. Past and
present. It helps clarify this change taking place.
And to (c) deconstruct ideas that’s already accepted and (d) to reconstruct new ideas that
are criticising the present conditions and (e) to make people more aware of what’s going
on.
When he chose the structure he was choosing with full of these allusions to suit the time
when knowledge isn’t giving its due importance, when the the intellectual powers are
failing, where people stopped reading history and learning tradition. This attitude wasn’t
found only on social and political levels, but also on literary levels. Literary tradition is
very important as a background of the poem. And Eliot defended tradition because he
knew that there’re group of writers who refuse to return to the past, and think that focusing
on the present is enough. They thought going to the past is an escape from the present
which is absolutely wrong in Eliot’s opinion.
Eliot is a defender of classicism and his poem is a clear proof of documenting the past.
All allusions are to works that speak of evil and death.
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The MAIN sources of the poem:
1. the poem is influenced by Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” which is divided into three
sections (1) inferno=hell (2) purgatorio= purgation or purification of the soul (3)
paradisio=paradise. These stages are build on religion and the soul of man and how
he purify himself from sins until it reaches the final level of paradise. These stages
are mentioned in The Waste Land and found in its development but not all of them.
Eliot spoke of stage (1) the destruction of the soul, stage (2) is mentioned twice as
assign of progress, stage (3), however, is never reached because of the situation of
modern man and his spiritual vacuity. Therefore, The Waste Land is described as
having a religious message, that we should return to God. Also, some figures of
Christ appear in the poem with the rain and thunder in the final section. Eliot was
interested in religious teaching and this is another dimension as to why to relate the
poem to a religious message and religious readings. And he wrote several plays
where he spoke of the loss of religious values.

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2. “The Golden Bough,” a religious book that speaks about the fertility of the land and
how to regained or revive the land after getting rid of the sins of the dominating
figures.
3. “The Grail Legend” a book with religion implication. It speaks of mythology and
Christian rituals and Christian civilisation. The whole book is a quest for grain to
save his land from sterility.
Why did Eliot use heteroglossia = multi languages?
Eliot is presenting a text that’s a Polyphonic and multilingual and
heteroglossic. Because the poem includes different voices, different sound and
languages. It isn’t simply an exercise of knowledge by Eliot for he knew six languages
including French, German, Greek, Italian, Celtic, and Latin. He enjoyed learning different
languages; but he used Plurilingualism because:
1. it’s adding a lot of richness to the text.
2. giving the text and his message and himself as a poet a universality.
3. he insists on a mature poet that extends in the whole world, crossing the
boundaries. “The serious writer of verse must be prepared to cross himself with the
best verse of other languages.”
4. he believed that poetry is accumulation of power and knowledge from different
resources.
5. he was influenced by Dante and followed his footsteps. [Divine Comedy includes
plurilingualism]
6. the revival of decaying cultures, the past, the old details by referring to them. This
agrees to his attitude as a critic.
7. to trigger the reader’s mind. Fragmentation make the reader think and relate
different elements and images. It makes them curious to know the meaning behind
these lines and trace it back. He puts the translation in the footnote but they’ll raise
the “why” in the reader’s head. The “why” will raise other questions and increase
their knowledge.
8. it’s part of the loss of identity
9. it’s a gothic element. It causes discomfort, worry, and restlessness.
10. The date of the poem, in the aftermath of WWI. After damaging many countries all
over the world. It has to be spoken by different voices and languages because of its
huge reflect.
Polyphonic text:
the use of various voices is part of the gothic element. The different sound pronunciation of
different languages come from ghostly figures. We don’t have real characters in The
Waste Land, we don’t know where they come from. They appear without a reason and
disappear without a reason. Also, strange sounds are part of estrangement.
Juxtaposition is major tool used by Eliot in this poem.
... it juxtaposes the past to the present by bringing back memories, and showing that
memory fails.
The inhabitants don’t want to remember and that’s why they’re separated from their past
and roots.
QUOTE Eliot was asked whether he wrote The Waste Land as a criticism of modern
world? and he answered “no, it’s grumbling on life, it’s an expression of a personal
disappointment in life.” However, it’s a criticism as critics pointed.
FORM
The poem is written without regular rhyme or rhythm which is the traditional way of writing
a poem. Though there’s some end rhymes, they’re not regular throughout the poem. Still

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has some musicality that links the lines very smoothly. Besides the alliteration that create
the internal music in the text.
It’s NOT written in free verse. Eliot doesn’t like to use the term free verse because if a
poem is totally free from sound effect then it’s not poem. Robert Frost has a famous
statement saying that writing a poem without a form is like playing tennis without a net.
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The Waste Land: Part one
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THE POEM
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There poem is divided into five movements:
Movement number one is considered as an epilogue to the rest of the poem because it
sums up different themes and has recurring characters throughout the poem. This shows
how the text is linked. The first movements is divided into four episodes.
The first episode he’s speaking about a desire of death and a desire of being frozen in
time and place , static, unmovable, and lifelessness.
The second episode is about modern failure to judge, the triviality of the matter, and how
they cannot link with their past, with tradition, and with earlier religious teachings.
The third episode shows how there’s a poor judgment and understanding, and that
people depend upon trivial characters which is Madame Sesostris and her sayings and
suggestions. She tells fortunes which exposes how superficial the modern minds are to
believe and truss such a woman and to describe her as “the wisest woman in Europe.”
The froth episode focuses on the key themes of unreality of life, the absurdity of life. It
starts with “Unreal city.” It suggests that the environment is polluted, unhealthy, sterile,
corrupted, dry, and therefore, unreal. And people have no aim. It intensifies the sense of
loss and horror.
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The Epigraph
written in Latin and Greek.
the epigraph sums up the major idea of the poem.
The Translation: "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when
the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”” These
lines presents Sibyl who, in classical mythology, was a prophetess in service to Apollo and
a great beauty. Apollo wished to take her as his lover and offered her anything she desired.
She asked to live for as many years as there were grains in a handful of dust. Apollo
granted her wish, but still she refused to become his lover. In time, Sibyl came to regret
her boon as she grew old but did not die. She lived for hundreds of years, each year
becoming smaller and frailer, Apollo having given her long life but not eternal youth. When
Trimalchio speaks of her in the Satyricon, she is little more than a tourist attraction, tiny,
ancient, confined, and longing to die.
This sums up the poem in which Sibyl is a symbol that represents the mental failure of the
inhabitants of The Waste Land. Her request is naive and immature because she wasn’t
wise enough that living forever alone will make her reach that situation which she is facing
here. This is the result of a mind that’s short sighted and naive and doesn’t consider the
consequences which is the condition of modern man. The reason of deterioration, chaos,
forgetfulness, is irrationality.
The second part, which is the imprisonment of Sibyl in that bottle, has different
suggestions: (1) being imprisoned in one static condition, in a deadly routine, no progress,

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with no future like the modern man. (2) they’re imprisoned and enslaved to their physical
and material desires. (3) women, since they’re recurring characters in the poem,
imprisoned in an oppressed situation. Physically alive but spiritually dead. They suffer
mental failure. They also aren’t described as beautiful which is similar to Sibyl’s situation.
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Episode ONE
In the opening lines of the text there are juxtaposition of a natural phenomena in which he
gave some seasons [spring and winter] unusual functions. The inhabitants want to live in
forgetfulness “forgetful snow.” They’re frozen in time by the snow. But what will April do
with its spring showers? it’ll revive the Earth. That’s why it’s cruel. Eliot isn’t interested in
the natural scene, he’s describing the land as a projection of the condition of the people
themselves. So when he say the lans is dry, he means the people are dry.
The inhabitants enjoy forgetfulness and want to live in a state of unawareness because
they don’t want to face reality, don’t want to remember, and don’t want to know the truth.
Because if you remind someone that he used to be clever, it mean that now he’s a failure.
Making people face the truth is cruel, and the season of spring by reviving memory and
desire is being very cruel.
Everything in The Waste Land is functioning in an abnormal manner. And any normal
function of weather is shocking.
The land is described as dead, sterile, and dry.
Starnbergersee is a name of a lake in Germany. So he’s giving realistic details to give a
kind of identity to the speaker.
First female figure: Line #12 a German girl “Marie Larisch: tourist" denying that she’s
Russian. It’s a suggestion of the loss of identity. The girl is going to different places and
trying to recollect some details of the past, and this past is prior to WWI. She’s a nostalgic
memory to the times when she was happy and young, and enjoying her freedom. The
memory is recorded in a stream of consciousness technique. The memory is fragmented
and the details aren’t directly linked together.
These lines are significant because they’re a reminder of a political situation which Eliot
was pointing to that left an effect upon him. Eliot had met Countess Marie Larisch and
talked with her and got information about her life and times, and the remarks in lines 8-18
are hers. She was driven outside the country to be replaced by another ruler. Force,
violence, attacks, loss of power and control are suggested by the figure of Marie. Lack of
focus and concentration that Marie speaks with is the mental failure that Eliot is projecting
through the figure of Marie. Fear also is suggested “#15 I was frightened.” A feeling of
loneliness, silence, and isolation.
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Episode TWO
shift to the roots of the past. The word roots is a keyword in The Waste Land. It connote
many meanings: spiritually, historically, politically, literary tradition. Roots give solidity,
they’re the foundation of the present.
(roots, dried roots, dull roots, dead tubers) are all figurative and symbolic to describe the
situation of modern man. Knowing that people choose to separate themselves from the
past, Eliot realises that they become nothing and empty. They suffer intellectual and
spiritual failure.
#20 rhetorical question. He uses a natural detail to symbolise the condition of man.
Son of man is a biblical reference from Ezekiel II where God is addressing Ezekiel “Son of
man stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.” Ezekiel was standing in a valley of
dry bones, dead people, and God asked him “do you think they can live?” Ezekiel replied
“you’re the only one who knows, God. I don’t know.” Eliot referred to this story to draw his
readers’ attention to return to religion and to the Bible.

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By quoting the Bible, he’s reviving the reader’s memory and trying to connect them back to
the biblical stories. And he’s juxtaposing the situation: in the past people used to go to the
Bible and read those stories and learn from them, at the present people don’t read and
don’t understand. Ezekiel’s answer is very wise, he knows his knowledge is limited. This
answer isn’t available at the present time because people don’t think and don’t know how
to construct their answer to any question. The condition of modern man is described here
as failure of knowledge. Separation from the past information and their roots. The result is
a heap of broken images. Total suffering and restlessness is suggested. The basic reason
for this dilemma and suffering and confusion is the separation from God and religion. The
description in #22-#23 projects the spiritual failure.
#23 is another allusion to the Bible. In the same story there’s a sense of fear suggested.
#25 “red rock” is a biblical reference. The red rock could also be an allusion to the Grail
Legend of the Fisher King. (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) an invitation placed
between brackets that interrupts the flow of the lines. It’s by Eliot to the reader: let’s go back
to religion and God which is the purgatorial stage.
The lines in German are taken from Tristan und Isolde which is an 1865 opera by Richard
Wagner about the ill-fated affair between the knight Tristan and the lady
Isolde. The opera is based on a medieval romance that was absorbed into the
Arthurian tradition. The quoted scene occurs near the beginning of the opera,
with Tristan escorting the captured Isolde by ship to Cornwall.
The Translation:Fresh blows the wind/For home;/My Irish child,/Where do you
tarry?
The significance of this allusion is to juxtapose a situation of love and to bring in an
example of failure that’s typical in The Waste Land. The marriage of Tristan and Isolde ailed
because it was a planned marriage. The juxtaposition suggested in the song itself, in the past
this lover is still trying to sing to his beloved and her arrival. Whether she likes him or not, this
is something different. He’s still welcoming her. Which doesn’t happen in modern times.
#40-#41 the words nothing and silence. The silence here is hurting and suggesting
nothingness.
#42 In act 3 of Tristan ind Isolde, Tristan lies dying. He’s waiting for Isolde to come to him
from Cornwall, but a shepherd, appointed to watch for her sail, can report only, “Waste and
empty is the sea.” Therefore, it was a futile relationship. The protagonist is disappointed and
frustrated "I could not/Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither/Living nor dead,”
Physical and mental failure.
Isolde is the second girls in the poem and her situation sums up the situation of women who
suffer physical and mental failure. The shades in The Waste Land are neither living nor dead.
And They know nothing.
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Episode THREE
Madame Sesostris is an allusion to a fortune teller and he borrows the name from an
Egyptian character.
The way he introduced her is ironic and sarcastic "known to be the wisest woman in
Europe.”
He’s criticising modern man for trusting a fortune teller. In the classical Egyptian story, that
woman is supposed to be speaking to them about the time of the flooding of the Nile and
the time of fertility, and so on. The pack of cards symbolise different figures that will
reappear in the poem [we’re still in the epilogue]. They are “the Phoenician
Sailor,Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,the one-eyed merchant, the man with
three staves, and The Hanged Man." The Phoenician Sailor is an ancient merchant

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who used to travel in the Mediterranean sea, he’ll reappear in part or movement number
four. He speaks of materialistic desires. the figure is symbolic of materialism and wealth
and that’s why he’s presented in the part about death by water. Imprisoned within his
desire for wealth and money. #48 “Look!” an invitation to look at a dead body in the bottom
of the sea, drowned by water and pearl eyes staring at you. A horrifying image, the “black”
of the eyes is gone, there’s only the white ball. [first Gothic detail, apart from the
description of the natural scene at the beginning] There’s an allusion to Shakespeare’s
The Tempest in the idea of drowning and that figure. Eliot chose The Tempest because in
it there’re people who are ready to kill one another for the sake of money. It brings to mind
the cruelty of brother to each other and that there’s no familial feelings between them.
There’s a suggestion of destruction of human values by the examples of the wise woman
and the greedy people.
Belladonna is the lady of situations. Belladonna is an Italian word for “a lovely lady.” Eliot is
referring to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Madonna of the Rocks.” A picture of Virgin
Mary. Another religious figure and Eliot is referring to the lady of situation.IT is juxtaposition
because modern women have nothing to do with Virgin Mary. The situation is totally the
opposite.
The one-eyed merchant is an image of the physical deformity and imperfection which
modern man suffer from. Anybody who has a mental disorder or abnormality, is also
physically suffering some abnormality. The deformity extends from the outside to the inside
or vice versa. And this imperfection is both inside and outside in man and in nature.
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Episode FOUR
The unreality of the situation alludes to Baudelaire’s “The Seven Old Men” The allusion
gives the key theme in this episode. Baudelaire was speaking about a crowded city and in
that city we have ghostly figures moving. Therefore, alluding to this sitting is to suggest
that this is the same atmosphere he’s describing here. He emphasises this by putting
“unreal city” in a separate line. Eliot stresses the unreality of the situation because he, the
man in exile, aware of the fact that his reader will not totally comprehend and accept this
text the way he wishes to happen. Therefore, he creates a dreamy atmosphere so that
people will accept the poem as part of imagination and poetic creation of the mind. He’s
avoiding the idea of mimeticism. He doesn’t want to say things in a direct manner. The
best poetry is always indirect.
“The Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge influenced Eliot. And it was built on Dante’s "Divine
Comedy.” And it has a strong religious background, talking about sins and redemption. T.
S. Eliot is doing the same in The Waste Land. The journey in “The Ancient Mariner” is
similar to the one here.
The objective correlative related to the theory of depersonalisation by Eliot which is a
major core of Eliot’s theory as a critic is borrowed from Coleridge.
Coleridge also used dreams to make the reader accept the development of the poem.
#62 Eliot is condemning the unreligious attitude of modern man.
All the previous images of the sitting agree with "the brown fog of the winter.” It’s the
season of death and nothingness. It’s a winter dawn that’s so fogy. The inhabitants are
living in that atmosphere and they’re part of it. They don’t see clearly, there’s always a
blurred vision. Also, it’s a frozen situation, there’s no change. They’re leading a very
routine-like life and routine kills.
The crowd “flows” because they’re like a bulk together. They got no identity, they’re moving
automatically and aimlessly.
“so many” is a sublime quality given to the crowed which creates a sense of fear.
London Bridge is a real place and it’ll be echoed at the end of the poem.
#63 allusion to Dante’s inferno. The stress here is that these people aren’t actually living.
They’re leading a death in life.

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#64 “sighs” example of polyphony. This line is also an allusion to Dante’s inferno.
#65 “looking before his feet” implies that they fail intellectually to think and plan. They live
in the current moment, and in limited area, with a limited vision. They have no strategy
because they’ve nothing to look forward to. If they have no past and they don’t remember
the past then they have no future to think about (Like Marie, the German girl) . This is the
conclusion of line #62, flawing aimlessly. The intellectual power fails so they flow
aimlessly.
King William St. is a real place.
#66 they’re flowing “up” and “down” but with no direction. They’re not aware of these
places.
#67 Saint Mary Woolnoth church is a real place. He mentions the church for two reasons:
firstly, the church is at the end of the road but they’re not aware of its existence and they’re
not aiming at it. Secondly, he said about the church that it “kept the hours” meaning that it
has a clock. But the striking sound of the clock isn’t heard by them. It’s "a dead sound” to
suggest that they don’t value time. Time is life, They’re wasting time and therefore their
lives. The church is in a famous area known as a financial zone. Referring to this zone
and the crowds that don’t value life but they’re still materialistic. Materialism is what keeps
them move.
#69 a suggested dialogue between two people who meet after a long time. “Stetson” is a
figure presumably representing the average businessman. Through this figure, the reader
reminded of war because these two people met at the battle of Mylae. A naval battle that
toke place between Rome and Carthage. So mentioned this battle to remind the reader
that he’s talking about a post-war situation. We don’t know the speaker but he fought at
Mylae with Stetson. This war and WWI are meaningless for Eliot. They only brought
mental and physical destruction.
#72 "Has it begun to sprout?” a very ironic tone. Sense of loss and horror are intensified by
the images here: the blooming and sprouting corpse. Ugliness.
#74 allusion to Webster’s "White Devil" a Dog digging up the corpse from the ground. The
allusion is taken tom a line sung by a woman to one of her sons who was killed by his
brother. An image of death and the story reminds us of evil and murder. Anubis is a Dog
headed Egyptian god and here he juxtapose that in the past, people had rituals
of burying the dead. In modern time it’s spoken of in a sarcastic tone and a light manner.
It’s no longer seen as punishment or evil.
He concludes with a french allusion because the episode started with a french allusion.
Eliot structured the poem intentionally to create a kind of frame for the text. It alludes to
Baudelaire’s “The Flowers of Evil.” In that text Baudelaire was speaking of people being
flattery and hypocrite. Translation: You! Hypocrite reader!—my fellow,—my brother!
It creates a kind of intimacy but he emphasis hypocrisy as a main illness of modern society.
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MOVEMENT TWO
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II. A Game of Chess: the title takes us to another example of the theme of failure of love.
The title itself is an allusion to Thomas Middleton’s two plays: A Game at Chess and
Women Beware Women. In the latter, there is a scene in which a mother-in-law is
distracted by a game of chess while her daughter-in-law is seduced: every move in the
chess game represents a move in the seduction. There is suggestion of corruption,
failure, and violence in the reference because Eliot wants to show the state of modern
women. They’re careless and unaware of what is going on.
The double meaning: breaking rules causes destruction and deterioration, but at the same
time, those who think they’ve broke the rules are imprisoned within this situation of
selfishness, isolation, and depression, and so on.
Eliot chose this title in this section to introduce a number of women characters. The title
relates to the situation of women who are oppressed and have no rights. They fail to carry
out a healthy relationship with family and children.
The game of chess suggests cleverness. It takes a very intelligent person to know how to
master the game. The game has strict rules and limitations. The pieces must be moved in
specific directions. The squares on the chessboard are like cells. The chessboard is
usually black&white. In modern times, we don’t have all this. Nobody abides by the rules or
limitations set by society’s tradition. Though they think they’re doing what they want, and
that they have the freedom to break the rules; they are imprisoned—like the chess pieces
— in materialism, selfishness, exile and estrangement in their society. They are separated
from God and other people.
A punctuation at the end of the poem lines is not common. There are a lot of run-on lines.
Eliot is trying to make people feel this breathless situation. That takes the breath away
making you exited, worried, confused and afraid at the same time. He is creating an effect
reflecting the harsh modern life.
This movement starts with a juxtaposition. It takes us back to Antony and Cleopatra by
William Shakespeare.
“burnished, glowed, candle, light, flames, glitter,” but the whole scene is a synthetic scene.
All artificial, unnatural, cold, and dead like the satin cases, marble, glass, and the ivory. It
is a rich setting with throne in it, in various colours and lights, with the Cupidon the
mythological symbol of love on the wall. But without the feeling, emotion, and warmth. It is
a death-like picture because it is so cold and lifeless. Eliot juxtaposes this situation with
that of Antony and Cleopatra , we know that because the description in the introductory
lines is similar to Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra’s throne. We are not introduced
to Cleopatra the character, only the setting. However, a rich woman is going to appear.
She lives in a luxurious place, like Cleopatra, but she is not enjoying love like her and
Antony.
The woman figure reminds us of the Belladonna (49) mentioned by Madame Sosostris.
We have to link these women figures together because the critics point out that they all
share similar qualities and at the end we will meet one woman figure with all these
qualities. There are different examples exposing different situations, especially the
situation of women in the 20th century.

11. 11
Lines 86-93: the setting is borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid. Virgil is describing the banquet
given by Dido, queen of Carthage, for Aeneas, with whom she fell in love. Eliot refers to
Dido as a mythological figure that is used by Virgil to contrast how that woman is preparing
a banquet with food and perfume and all for the arrival of her lover; to contrast that with
disappointment and frustration of love in modern times.
Lines 97-99: Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140. Milton's poem Paradise Lost
retells the story of the Fall. Eliot refers to the scene where Satan comes in view of Eden.
Eliot is still brining evil images of paradise being lost. The situation is horrific for living in
hellish condition.
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Line 99: V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela. The story of Philomela is given by Ovid in
Book VI of Metamorphoses. The beautiful Philomela is kidnapped, raped, and imprisoned
by her sister Procne's husband, King Tereus. To prevent Philomela from revealing what he
has done, Tereus then cuts out her tongue. Imprisoned, isolated, and unable to speak,
Philomela weaves a tapestry depicting her suffering at Tereus' hands and sends it to
Procne. Procne, enraged, frees her sister. The sisters then take their revenge on Tereus,
murdering his and Procne's son and feeding the boy's body to the king. When the sisters
reveal what they've done, Tereus charges them in fury. Before he can reach them,
however, all three are transformed into birds. This reference represents violence, cruelty,
brutality and oppression of women in modern life. It shows failure and sterility of relations
because this love relation fails and ends with nothing. Philomela changed into a
nightingale, so the beautiful bird is echoing the story of violence. “”yet [Eliot wrote], there
the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice.” In the past, people used to listen
to the nightingale and remember the story of Philomela, and to learn the lesson, and to
understand that there is a crime and punishment. The present situation, however, is
different. In the past, “still she cried and still the world pursues”. But today, the world is
listening to the nightingale as if it is “jug jug to dirty ears.” Ugliness instead of the beautiful
twittering of this beautiful bird. [Polyphony] “jug jug” means nothing and represents
nothing. It is rather meaningless, harsh, loud, disturbing noise. The ears do not function in
the normal way, failure as other organs of the body. They listen to the nightingale but do
not understand the story behind it.
Images from this story recur throughout the poem. In his note for line 100, Eliot directs us
to an echo of the Philomela story in Part III. The swallow appears again at the end of the
poem.
Lines 100-103:
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
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Eliot's Note:100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.
Referenced Lines 203-206:
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu
Context: For the story of Philomela, see the note to line 99. Representations of birdsong
recur throughout the poem and are usually linked with images of water. Additional
examples include:

12. 12
Line 313:
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
Lines 356-358:
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pines trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Lines 391-394:
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
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Lines 104-110: stillness, quietness, hushes, are stressed in the place that is dare of life. It
is a cold, marble life with no emotions. Degradation in belief in sadness. In modern time
we do not see life after death, instead we see death-in-life. We see loss of the power of
appreciation.
The nervous lady in that boudoir, appealing to the man accompanying her—who is
supposedly the husband—is again an example of failure in relationship. Failure in
communication between a husband and a wife. Men-women relationship is destroyed in
modern society. She is very nervous, restless, hysterical, bored woman which is typical of
the psychological disturbance in modern time. She is asking her husband to talk to her.
Lines 112-115: The words think and speak are repeated five times because the whole
poem is dealing with intellectual failure and the lack of communication. The repetition also
means that she lacks the knowledge to rephrase her questions. To communicate, you
need to think and have knowledge and information, this links to the idea of failure of
knowledge, man you know nothing but a heap of broken images [part 1].
“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?” She hesitates, even the word ‘thinking’
seems meaningless to her. Eliot is not blaming neither the wife nor the husband, they both
cannot communicate with each other. Both fail to construct a healthy relationship.
Her answer “I think we are in rats' alley/Where the dead men lost their bones.” is shocking.
It incases the horrific situation of their lack of communication. Rats live in deserted, ugly
places, like the waste land. Ugliness, vacuity, ruin, sterility, dryness, and hollowness.
“Dead men lost their bones,” total annihilation. Total non-existence, nothing exists, not
even the bones. A pessimistic point of view suggested by the speaker because the bones
are annihilated then there is no revival. The inhabitants are not even looking for a life after
death. Deterioration spread all over, he is projecting the situation of rich women here, but
the following example is from the common class, Lil.
It is an absurd situation and meaningless questions. [Eliot’s effect on Samuel Beckett].
Language fails, therefore, communication fails.
Eliot's Note: 115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.
Referenced Lines 193-195:
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
Eliot was familiar with the psychological studies made by Freud and Jung in the
beginning of the century. In the Waste Land, there are examples that are very brief as the
situation is. They are not character that develop in the poem; they are flat, simple
presentation of a scene, one situation.
Lines 118-119: Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?” Reference: The Devil's Law
Case by John Webster where a physician asks this question on finding that a victim of a
murderous attack is still breathing, meaning “is her still alive?”
The situation stresses more mental failure and the destruction of family ties.

13. 13
Line 120: “Nothing again nothing.” Is a Shakespearian reference to king Lear’s dialogue
with his youngest daughter Ophelia. She said “I have nothing to say” when he asked how
much she loved him. She wanted him to feel her love not to talk about it. He was very
disappointed and punished her by denying her any inheritance from him. But then he was
proven wrong and his other two daughters were hypocrites and kicked him out. He lost his
eyesight symbolically, that he could not see the difference between the children. This is an
example of mental failure and the irrationality of the inhabitants of The Waste Land. It is
similar to the idea in the epigraph. It also suggests the ingratitude behaviour of children to
their parents. And the relationships are built on a materialistic interest. Additionally, The
Waste Land does not have a similar character to Ophelia who is loving, sincere, and
honest.
Line 122: “know, see, remember” failure in all these aspects.
Line 125 is from The Tempest and an echo of line 48. Shakespeare's The Tempest tells of
the sorcerer Prospero, who along with his daughter has been exiled on a remote island for
many years. Prospero engineers a shipwreck to reclaim his usurped position as the Duke
of Milan. Among the shipwrecked is Ferdinand, prince of Naples and soon-to-be suitor to
Proper's daughter, Miranda. The lines quoted by Eliot are part of song by the spirit Ariel,
servant to Prospero, telling Ferdinand that his father died in the shipwreck. Unbeknownst
to Ferdinand, the spirit is lying. Later, in the note to line 218, Eliot links Ferdinand to both
the Phoenician sailor and Fisher King. He returns to this passage throughout The Waste
Land: 124-125, 191-192, 257.
Lines 128-130: lyrics of an American popular song in Eliot’s time. It stresses on freedom
from limitations and restrictions. This is what the song discusses, people are enclosed and
leading a very monotonous life. The song is mocking this kind of life.
Lines 131-134: these lines are quite important because they are indicative of the situation
as a whole. The wasted life. The speaker here is the rich woman in her boudoir, the
woman of situation, the belladonna of the poem, who lost her identity. She is nameless.
She appears and disappears in the poem as a ghostly figure. The man, also, is
unidentified whether he is the husband or a lover. They are in the room together and bored
all the time. There is lack of communication and interaction. “Speak” is repeated several
times, and “nothing” is repeated in the conclusion as they have nothing to share and to
think. To sum up all this now, “What shall I do now? What shall we ever do?” All the
previous details definitely lead to this state. Such people, who have nothing on their minds,
have no plan, no future. This is the boring monotonous life. They keep on repeating
themselves. These people are now the physical shapes in the city, empty inside and it kills
them. “What shall I do?” And all she can think of is walking the street and letting her hair
down. Eliot is emphasising the immorality of that society which is the result of all the
mentioned failures. They lead to nothing but more immorality and more deterioration in the
society.
Line 137: a game of chess, the same as in the title. It emphasises the wasted lives.
Line 138: “a knock upon the door.” reminds us of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
This poem has paved the way for the rise of the absurd theatre. It talks about the
meaninglessness of life at this time which is the concern of the theatre of the absurd.
And “pressing lidless eyes,” is part of the physical deterioration and the horrific images that
agree with the rats ally and annihilation of the bones. This physical destruction is
connected to the inner—spiritual and mental—destruction. They are connected like man
and nature. The outside is nothing but a reflection of the inside. If you have a physical
deformity, it is a result of an inner deformity. The word “waiting” is the waste. Keeping on
waiting is the point Eliot is highly criticising. People are wasting their lives doing nothing.
This is what causes agony; nothing will change unless people work to change things.
Line 139: the introduction of Lil which is the fifth woman in the poem. She is a commoner
and wed to a soldier. The mentioning of a soldier and army is a reminder of WWI. The

14. 14
poem is written to record the aftermath and the deterioration of WWI. All these distractions
are the result of war, bloodshed, and materialism. Eliot puts in more details about the
destruction of families as a result of war. The husband is travelling for long time, so women
lose interest. Lil does not look at all her age. She is only 31 but looks very old. The
ugliness of her picture support the distorted background of the text. Her fiend is advising
her to put on some nice set and fix her teeth. The friend says if the husband comes back
and finds her in this situation, her will look somewhere else for a better looking woman.
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This scene is very important because it introduces different problems and different details
in society which he is disapproving of. First, the troubles of people who join the army and
leave their families behind. Second, the problem of women taking pills “apportion” which
was discussed thoroughly at that time. There was a division in society between those who
are religious enough to object on them. And those who do not mind. Eliot as a religious
poet is against the pills. And he is projecting the damage of it here. That Lil is physically
weak and unhealthy. As she say “Then I'll know who to thank…It's them pills I took.” Third
problem is why do people get married if they do not want children. Fourth, the problem of
time. “Hurry up please its time” is actually a call made by bartenders in closing time. It is
repeated five times for emphasis. It links with the idea in PART ONE that people are
moving on the bridge and they do not listen to the hour. People in The Waste Land are
unaware of the importance and passage of time. Which is a mental failure.
The names Lil and Albert are mentioned here as a typical English couple.
Line 172: “goodnight,” repeated which is an allusion to Hamlet’s Ophelia. Eliot alludes to
her to juxtapose past to present. Eliot is talking about the irrationality of modern man.
Ophelia went crazy after knowing that her lover killed her father. The two men she loved
most. This kind of sincerity and devotion in love is the reason of her madness. This is not
the case with modern love. Lil does not care about her husband and her friend is telling
her that he will go to someone else. The two love situations are contrasted. They both fail,
but in the past they fail because of love not because of the lack of love. Eliot starts with the
famous love story of Antony and Cleopatra and concludes with Ophelia. The young,
innocent, and pure girl who could not bear the shock. So he ends with a tragedy because
the situation in The Waste Land is a tragedy.
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15. 15
T. S. Eliot’s Attitude Towards the English Culture
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The Waste Land discusses different cultures and introduces different cultural
backgrounds. Eliot is supportive of the fact the a poem should cross boundaries. That a
poem is a work of art, when speaking of art, ideas, thoughts should bridge between
cultures and languages. However, if we are speaking of the specific native culture, does
the intercultural action mean that Eliot does not want or support a native culture? The
answer is no. He does not negate this idea at all. On the contrary, Eliot is supportive of a
native culture. Therefore, his attitude towards the English culture is that they should go
back to their past and roots in order to redefine their own Englishness. Eliot was sure that
literature and literary writers at his time were not devoted enough to this idea. So he
together with Virginia Wolf and E. M. Forster were participants in the revival of the idea of
Englishness. The native culture of England. And the poem [TWL] that stresses the return
to the roots, and the relation with God, bears the same meaning. The poem is basically
focusing on the cosmopolitan city, the city of London. So it mainly describes the situation in
London, but it moves to generalise to show that such a situation is recurrent elsewhere.
One of the major aims is to revive the concept of culture that is native emphasising the
class-bound notion of Englishness that invokes traditional details. Eliot, therefore, as a
modernist, was anticipating in his writings the worldwide retreat of the British imperialism.
Because he is actually showing that in order to remake the English culture, they have to
retreat this idea of imperialism. Because imperialism is what created a hybrid culture. They
started to lose their native culture and Eliot was against this. The idea gives him two
sources of power. First, that he is anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and anti-hybrid
cultures. There is a difference between a hybrid origin and the multiplicity of cultural
societies. In the latter, the native culture is preserved. So modernist literature role as Eliot
saw it, was to revive the cultural map of Europe and English through returning to the past.
Eliot’s returning to the past has several implications. One of the main ones is the revival of
what he thought was misunderstood or left away, especially the idea of a Christian society.
And he has a treatise with a title “The Idea of a Christian Society.” It was published 17
years after The Waste Land, but he was criticising in it what he felt when he was writing
The Waste Land. That is the different institutes and the different interests in different
countries all over the world, which the imperialist English were practicing, destroyed the
original roots and tradition of the English Christian society. Eliot was calling the English to
attend to their own languishing traditions. Especially the rituals of the native Christianity.
So he called them to return to their origin, their roots, their rituals as a native Christian
society. He traced back the changes since the Roman conquest. Returning to primitive life
does not imply an escape from the present. On the contrary, the suggestion is that they
recover their relation to nature, recover their relation to God, recover their religious rituals,
and they recognise that the most primitive feelings of caring, sharing, interacting, and
loving are part of the heritage. That they need it most in the present time with all the
scientific developments and discoveries. This is what he stated in his essay and what he
practised in the poem. The poem is definitely calling for a return to the past in order to
have a solid ground to learn and connect. Also to return to the spiritual values. All this is a
revival based on a revolution in attitude. The poem is revolutionary in its presentation, in its
kaleidoscopic structure, and in its stream of consciousness technique. It is revolutionary,
also, in calling for a struggle to revive the examples of the past. He wanted to reach an
idealised picture. His purpose is to reach an organisation or a city where you can combine
between the church and the state, between art and faith, between town and country. It is
his concern with country and destruction of nature that made him start with an allusion to
nature in the poem. Of course he was talking symbolically and figuratively when describing
nature behave in an abnormal way. But there is a deeper meaning pointed out by critics, it
is not only an allusion to Chaucer and the inhabitants living in forgetfulness. It is the

16. 16
destruction of nature. Because throughout the destruction of nature man is destroyed
because he is part of it. Eliot believes in this. Throughout the poem he mentions many
images of dryness, annihilation, pollution, all those symbolically suggest the pollution of
the environment. The pollution of the environment means and leads to all what is in the
poem like the mental pollution, the spiritual pollution, and the emotional pollution. That is
eventually the destruction of the human being. He believes in the importance of the natural
environment and that is why he wants a link between the life in the town and in the
country. The countryside is very important. To know agriculture is to know nearly
everything else about life. Therefore, he believes that the urbanisation of the country, the
destruction of the greenery, is the destruction of the human beings. Urbanising the minds
of people turn them to sterile minds. Therefore, Eliot was writing about this relation
between culture, and the land, and the economy. Language, too, is part of the culture and
that is why he includes the languages in the poem. The use of plurilingalism was for
several reasons, one of them is to project the picture of modern Europe. That is the
colonisation definitely introduced many languages in the society which results in the loss of
identity. That is why “Marie” in the beginning of the poem says I am not Russian, I am
German of Lithuanian roots. It is indicative of what has been going on in Europe. In Eliot’s
time, England was retreating from the colonised countries, it is a the stage pre to the
postcolonial stage. They were loosing their Englishness. He is saying that art should cross
the cultural boundaries but without loosing the identity of the speaker. He was criticising
what was going on in Europe of the multiplicity of languages because it is uprooting people
from their cultures. And it is even ruining the original languages. He is interested in these
languages, he knows about them and their cultures, but it does not come at the expense of
loosing his identity. Eliot praises W. B. Yeats for supporting and reconstructing the Irish
culture and reaching universality through his native culture. He was telling the English
writers to learn from Yeats. To speak about the issues that really concern the human
beings in your country, will automatically become universal. Because those human beings
have shared the problems with others. The deeper you go into your roots the more
universal you become. He wanted the English to realise this, because this hybrid culture
started to invade them. They are loosing their own Englishness. Some critics call the effort
of reviving the English culture: the Anglocentric revivalism. Eliot was aware that this
imperialism does not only affect the English society. The effect of the cross-cultural
interactions was on both sides, the colonised and the coloniser. That is why he is
universalising his message. He is also aware that imperialism eroded the traditional life
across the globe. This destruction of traditional life worried him and he wrote about it. Son
of man you know nothing but a heap of broken images.
The critic McLaughlin said in 2000 that The Waste Land is a world poem. He says it is
unprecedented attempt by any poet except Dante in his Divine Comedy. So he places the
attempt made by Eliot on equal footing with Dante. They bridge cultures and languages
and try to reconcile all this in a very unique original form. And this relate to Eliot’s theory
that a text should use intertextuality.
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