The Waste Land, written by T.S. Eliot, is poem portraying the lack and/or the corruption of culture in England during the post WWI period. Eliot uses a form of symbolism, in which he uses small pieces from popular literary works, to deliver his message. He begins by saying that culture during the post WWI period is a “barren wasteland.” Eliot goes on to support this claim by saying that people in England are in a sort of shock from the violence of World War I. Eliot believes that the lack of culture open doors for immorality to grow among the populace.
Eliot’s use of symbolism can be very disorienting. It has been proposed that this choppy medley is actually furthering his point by representing the “ruins” of a culture. An article by Glyndŵr University states that, “Eliot wants us to experience that sense of fragmentation for ourselves, and this is why the poem uses a kind of collage technique - assembling chunks of texts together in what seems a random and arbitrary way - to recreate this sense of cultural rubble”. Eliot purposely used fragments of well known literary works to give the appearance that the culture was in pieces. Eliot style complemented the main point of his poetry, adding to the appearance of a culture in ruins.
In the years following WWI, culture was almost nonexistent in England. People were more focused on getting back to living a normal life than arts or music. Eliot echoes several books of the Bible to describe this culture.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of ...
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...ck of culture on the fact that people were more focused on getting back to normal life than art and music and various other forms of culture. Eliot thought that this emptiness in culture gave way to immorality in society. However, he believed that there was still a chance for the renewal of society. Eliot thought that religion would be able to save England’s society. Eliot’s poem condemns England’s post WWI culture and offers a solution to the problem.
Works Cited
Davis, B. (2003). http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/. Retrieved February 25, 2014, from http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~bedavis/davisjmhreview.pdf
Eliot, T. S., & Rainey, L. (2005). The Annotated Wasteland with Eliot's Contemporary Prose. Devon, PA: Duke & Company.
Glyndwr University. "Untitled." Glyndŵr University - Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2014. .
“Modern critics agree… that the novel has unity that its subject is an exploration of human aspiration and fulfillment by individual and social influences…” as a lining for various themes that Eliot uses through imagery and language. (Doyle 118) Beginning wi...
The Modernist era of poetry, like all reactionary movements, was directed, influenced, and determined by the events preceding it. The gradual shift away from the romanticized writing of the Victorian Era served as a litmus test for the values, and the shape of poetry to come. Adopting this same idea, William Carlos Williams concentrated his poetry in redirecting the course of Modernist writing, continuing a break from the past in more ways than he saw being done, particularly by T.S. Eliot, an American born poet living abroad. Eliot’s monumental poem, The Waste Land, was a historically rooted, worldly conscious work that was brought on by the effects of World War One. The implementation of literary allusions versus imagination was one point that Williams attacked Eliot over, but was Williams completely in stride with his own guidelines? Looking closely at Williams’s reactionary poem to The Waste Land, Spring and All, we can question whether or not he followed the expectations he anticipated of Modernist work; the attempts to construct new art in the midst of a world undergoing sweeping changes.
The most obvious stylistic device used by Eliot is that of personification. She uses this device to create two people from her thoughts on old and new leisure. The fist person is New Leisure, who we can infer to be part of the growth of industry in the 19th century. He is eager and interested in science, politics, and philosophy. He reads exciting novels and leads a hurried life, attempting to do many things at once. Such characteristics help us to create an image of New Leisure as Eliot sees him.
In order to understand T.S. Eliot’s poem, Choruses from “The Rock,” one must first understand Eliot’s views on contemporary theology and spirituality. He felt as if people were moving away from the Church and were losing their religion in favor of more secular worship. The following passage from Eliot’s poem can summarize his entire argument that he makes in Choruses from “The Rock”.
Eliot’s diction can be seen criticising the war with his line “This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper” (Eliot). He may be criticising the war, and that many of the men who died did not die because they were shot, hence the bang, but died because of disease or frostbite. P.G Ellis, a member of the Review of English Studies at Oxford University Press says that Eliot understands exactly how “powerful precise phrases and words” are going to be to readers and critics (299). Eliot may have know more about what was going on in the war, and decided the best way to get others to understand was to bring in heavy criticisms. Eliot's choice of how he would word these things are important to bringing in more weight into the matter. F.R Leavis, a member of the Massachusetts Review Incorporation, said in an article on Eliot that Eliot’s “work in sum is of great importance to those who have questions” (9). Eliot is not afraid to write and criticize the world, and the purpose of this is to bring importance to topics, so others do not have to ask many questions. Eliot is a critic of many things, and at the time that this poem was written it is clear to see that he is criticising the war that was
Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot; a Poem by Poem Analysis. New York:
In his poem "The Waste Land," T.S. Eliot employs a water motif, which represents both death and rebirth. This ties in with the religious motif, as well as the individual themes of the sections and the theme of the poem as a whole, that modern man is in a wasteland, and must be reborn.
...In "The Waste Land," Eliot delivers an indictment against the self-serving, irresponsibility of modern society, but not without giving us, particularly the youth a message of hope at the end of the Thames River. And in "Ash Wednesday," Eliot finally describes an example of the small, graceful images God gives us as oases in the Waste Land of modern culture. Eliot constantly refers back, in unconsciously, to his childhood responsibilities of the missionary in an unholy world. It is only through close, diligent reading of his poetry that we can come to understand his faithful message of hope.
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.
T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land" is considered by many to be the most influential work in modern literature. First published in 1922, it captures the feelings and sentiments of modern culture after World War I. Line thirty of "The Waste Land," "I will show you fear in a handful of dust," is often viewed as a symbol of mankind’s fear of death and resulting love of life. Eliot’s masterpiece—with its revolutionary ideas—inspired writers of his era, and it continues to affect writers even today.
Different speakers in "The Waste Land" mirror the disjointedness of modern experience by presenting different viewpoints that the reader is forced to put together for himself. This is similar to the disassociation in modern life in that life has ceased to be a unified whole: various aspects of 20th-century life -- various academic disciplines, theory and practice, Church and State, and Eliot's "disassociation of sensibilities," or separation of heart and mind -- have become separated from each other, and a person who lives in this time period is forced to shore these fragments against his or her ruins, to borrow Eliot's phrase, to see a picture of an integrated whole.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.
Overall Eliot’s allusions used in his poem The Waste Land all had purpose and related to something deeper. Wither it is love or the creation of life Eliot was able to make several connection to the reader and other writings. Eliot wrote his poem to announce to the world the devastation of the First World War. Eliot made references to biblical, mythical or and other forms of literary. Eliot used them to his advantage to show the social break down of the US after WWI. The Waste Land is truly a testament to T.S. Eliot and his modernistic style of writing.
The Wasteland is a poem Eliot wrote after his divorce with his wife Vivienne Haighwood. Critics say the title of the poem, the wasteland, comes from his thoughts on his marriage. This poem is considered to be “one of the most difficult poems in a difficult literary period”. The Wasteland is a poem that is said to be of his most influential work. At first glance, critics considered the poem to be too modern but then opinions changed as they realized the poem reflected Eliot’s disillusionment with the moral decay of World War I in Europe. T.S. Eliot in The Wasteland combines theme, style, and symbolism to explore life and death.
Michael, Levenson H. A Genealogy of Modernism: A study of English literary doctrine 1908-1922. 28 Feb. 2005 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/wasteland.htm.