T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land †Can We Learn From the Past...

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land – Can We Learn From the Past ? And he is not likely to know what is To be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but what is already living. --T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent When read for the first time, The Waste Land appears to be a concoction of sorts, a disjointed poem. Lines are written in different languages, narrators change, and the scenes seem disconnected, except for the repeated references to the desert and death. When read over again, however, the pieces become coherent. The Waste Land is categorized as a poem, but exhibited visually, it appears to be a literary†¦show more content†¦The Waste Land is broken up into five parts, each with its own subtitle. In each of these parts, Eliot tells the stories of many different lives while also incorporating poetry lines and song lyrics from other cultures. These lines often translate into something depressing, tying into Eliots themes of death and emptiness. An example is the epigraph of this poem, taken from Virgils Aeneid, about a conversation between some boys and Sybil at Cumae. The boys ask her what she wants, and she replies, I want to die. Sybil is suspended in a jar, and Eliot uses t his image to represent the human race. The epigraph sets for the tone for the rest of the poem of hopelessness and the condition of human moral desolation. The human race is also hanging suspended in a jar, undergoing a similar fate. Yet humanity is blind to its imprisonment, reliving the same experiences, unable to leave the jar, unable to die. Eliot composed this poem, focusing on females and their passive reaction to violence, to bring the human race into full awareness of its jar-like imprisonment. These women, taken from different cultures and times, are all victims of sexual abuse. But rather than fighting and demanding justice, they ignore the abuse and accept their situation. It is easier to forget the pain than to confront it, because when facing pain, one must relive the experience that causes the pain. But to ignore pain is to deny life, for one is suppressing feeling, theShow MoreRelatedT.S. Eliot s The Fire Sermon - a Poem Analysis Focusing on the Elements of Nature5145 Words   |  21 PagesT.S. Eliot The Fire Sermon An analysis of the poem focusing on the elements of nature Joachim TRAUN 0004165 301/341 It is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling (T.S. Eliot on The Waste Land) Table of contents page 1. Introduction 4 2. T.S. Eliot- a brief biography 4 3. The fire sermon 5 3.1 Structure 6 3.2 Intertextuality 6 3.3 Interpretation 8 3.3.1 Water 8 3.3.2 City 11 3.3.3 Fusion 13 4. Conclusion 14 Bibliography 1. Introduction There are not many poemsRead MoreModernist Elements in the Hollow Men7051 Words   |  29 PagesA WHIMPER T.S.Eliot, The Hollow Men (95-98). The end of The Hollow Men can only be the beginning of a deep and long reflection for thoughtful readers. T.S. Eliot, who always believed that in his end is his beginning, died and left his verse full of hidden messages to be understood, and codes to be deciphered. It is this complexity, which is at the heart of modernism as a literary movement, that makes of Eliot’s poetry very typically modernist. As Ezra Pound once famously stated, Eliot trulyRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Harold Pinter s The Room 9709 Words   |  39 Pagesgeneration dramatists, Harold Pinter’s fame rests on not only his popular dramas but also on his political activism which is rooted in his concern for people and their condition in realms which can be termed as social, professional or political. In fact it can be said that many of his works starting from the early comedies of menace to the later overtly political plays run parallel to his political activism in the delineation of abuse of p ower in familial, social and political sphere and its somatic