This is the first of four papers that I am writing for my final English course at Ohio State. It's on my favorite 20th Century work, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. ------ Introduction: The Waste Land dictates Eliot’s concerns that the modern world has lost a natural, driving force from the past, and that modern society is unable to reclaim this nature. His modernist vision is one of fragments; the post-war world is broken and no one has the answers to putting everything back together. The difficulty of this work comes from connecting statements about the condition of modern living with interjections of confusion, loss, grief, despair, and nostalgia. It is here that we see Eliot’s depiction of the present world contrasted to a vibrant and hopeful past. The Waste Land elaborates on memories of a brighter past, the ruins of a pessimistic present, and desire toward a better future through usage of multiple voices and perspectives, natural elements from vegetation mythology and ceremony, and a fundamental attention toward our collective lacking as human beings. I. Fragmentary Voices, Present Ruins, Hopeful Past A multitude of speakers dominate the first three sections of the poem, creating a cacophonous barrage of memories and conversations that highlight a greater sense of loss in the world. From the beginning of The Burial of the Dead, we have the voices of Marie and a patron to “famous clairvoyante” Madame Sosostris. Marie recalls a blissful youth directly juxtaposed to elaborations on “a heap of broken images, where the sun beats” (line 22.) The reoccurring theme of ruinous rocks and lack of water to sate a thirst for life begins here and runs throughout the entire work. Madame Sosostris incorrectly asserts upon the future using such terms as rocks and water, but Eliot crafts her declarations as a warning sign to the world’s failed ways. The patron to Sosostris is looking for meaning, looking for purpose. They have failed to find truth in other ways, so they have resigned themselves to seeking out a tarot reading with little bearing in objective truth. This disassociation from sensibility is driving these interjecting voices to searching for truth in less sensible ways than in the past, and they are both unable to root it out or find a way back to sensible, pure happiness. Things that once brought happiness no longer apply, and the methods for finding happiness in new things are unavailable. This dual prong of pessimism presents itself at the end of The Burial of the Dead, as the voice wanders through an unreal, unsubstantiated London. They are in grief and a brief conversation with a man known as Stetson seems arbitrary and spectral. Lines 70-76 demonstrate an estranged quality of language intended to carry the weight of death in the post-war era. It is strangely intimate in everyday conversation while simultaneously seeming inconsequential, ordinary, and distant. This disconnection to mortality is central to the world’s failings, as later voices urge forth a sense of urgency, of returning to the concrete reality of life’s natural progression. II. The Fisher King, Vegetation Mythology, Nature Vegetation mythology forms the backbone of The Waste Land’s deeper metaphysical interpretations toward a dry, desolate world unable to revitalize itself to its former glory. Vegetation mythologies are Eliot’s primary method in crafting the overwhelming sense of irrevocable loss in A Game of Chess. We are given a detailed portrait of a wealthy woman’s sitting room, and using this elaborate imitation of nature, we derive meaning from the juxtaposition of a modern and a natural world: something is wrong. Her room is eerie, unsettling, and unnatural. The painting of Philomel does most of the heavy lifting in organizing the flaw with this woman’s carefully crafted imitation of reality. This literal portrait frames the woman’s attempt toward reconnecting with nature, but only frustrates both her and the reader. This woman is unable to vocalize her loss, just as Philomel was unable to tell her story after having her tongue cut out. She instead weaves a tapestry to tell her story, and the woman presented in The Waste Land has weaved a tapestry of her own in the form of her elaborate sitting room. The critical difference, however, is that this woman’s tapestry falls short of complete expression, whereas Philomel succeeded. As with The Fisher King, modern society is unable to imitate the former glory of revitalization and expression from the past, falling short at every attempt to reclaim natural life. Natural elements, such as fire, water, air, and earth, create categories by which Eliot conveys his respective concerns over the modern state of affairs. All elements are present in A Game of Chess: air that sooths but does not mend, unnatural copper fed fire representing misplaced desire, earth of jewels and marble (possibly referencing the lust of Mammon and the death of natural humanity due to technological greed), and water in the strange liquids of the woman’s perfumes. Tied to each of these elements is a sense of polarity: earth is death, water is life, fire is desire, and air is frivolous talk or purposeless action. Eliot returns to earth and water in greater detail in What the Thunder Said, creating the moving “rock and water” segment (lines 331-359) that outlines modernisms exact lacking: there is only death, only rock, and there is no longer water, or nature to rejuvenate humanity. The Fisher King is dead, he cannot be reinstalled, and vegetation will not return to the modern world because of a fundamental shift in humanity during and after the First World War. III. Dissociation, Ruins, Fragments, and the Future The final segment of the poem, What the Thunder Said, ties the previous threads together and asserts Eliot’s views on a fragmented and flawed modern existence. The first stanza (lines 322-330) neatly summarizes Eliot’s grand view of the modern world with uncharacteristic, straightforward language. “After the torchlight… after the frosty… after the agony…” all serve to synthesize the elements of war that have led to humanities ruin. The remaining lines draw attention to society’s dwindling lives, dying with “little patience” (line 330.) As the title suggests, this opening stanza is what the thunder said. More plainly, this is the truth that is evident after the war and it is everywhere. Eliot recalls fragments from earlier in the work; mountains, spring, rock, fire, death, and a clever use of reverberation to mimic the fragments’ own echoes. These fragments are organized and clear, yet elusive and inculpable, just as natural truth and purpose have evaded the voices throughout the work. Eliot’s use of repetition of these fragments throughout the rest of What the Thunder Said forms his final assertion of optimism, despite the contemporary state of his failed world. In the final stanza we find three lines that create this vision of the future: lines 424-425 and line 431. The first, “I sat upon the shore…” conjures the image of Eliot fishing upon the shore of a world in ruins, hoping to catch a hold of some truth or greater understanding; the second, an echo of the first, “These fragments I have shored against my ruin” is his assertion that, despite a world in ruin, he intends to hold these poetic fragments against his own mortal quandary in the hopes of achieving fulfillment. These lines shed immense light on Eliot’s true vision of the future as an artistic endeavor deeply invested in a hopeful, fragmented modernist perspective. He is not suggesting that we rebuild the ruins to their former state but instead use the fragments for new purposes. With these three brilliant lines he casts the future in a nuanced hope, different than the hope of a brighter past, while maintaining his view of a flawed present. Conclusion Eliot does not relent in describing the post-war condition as anything less than failed, lost, and irrevocably doomed. Instead, The Waste Land goes to great length in describing the nuances of this confused state before offering a final optimism on modern fragmentary living: we are broken, we cannot mend our condition to match the past, and therefore we must use our broken facilities for new purposes. Ezra Pound famously stated this belief as “the carving of new wood” (the new wood being broken by Walt Whitman, of course.) Through the wandering, illusive passages of The Waste Land, we revel in the innocent glory of the past, absorb the grim reality of a ruined present, and press our lidless eyes toward a future of fragments.