The Waste Land: Parallels with Other Myths
The Waste Land summarizes the Grail legend, not precisely in the usual order, but retaining the principal incidents and adapting them to a modern setting. Eliot's indebtedness both to Sir James Frazer and to Jessie L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance (in which book he failed to cut pages 138-39 and 142-43 of his copy) is acknowledged in his notes. Jessie L. Weston's thesis is that the Grail legend was the surviving record of an initiation ritual. Later writers have reaffirmed the psychological validity of the link between such ritual, phallic religion, and the spiritual content of the Greek Mysteries. Identification of the Grail story with the common myth of the hero assailing a devil-dragon underground or in the depths of the sea completes the unifying idea behind The Waste Land. The Grail legend corresponds to the great hero epics, it dramatizes initiation into maturity, and it bespeaks a quest for sexual, cultural, and spiritual healing. Through all these attributed functions, it influenced Eliot's symbolism.
Parallels with yet other myths and with literary treatments of the "quest" theme reinforce Eliot's pattern of death and rebirth. Though The Tempest, one of Eliot's minor sources, scarcely depicts an initiation "mystery," Colin Still, in a book of which Eliot has since written favorably (Shakespeare's Mystery Play), had already advanced the theory in 1921 that it implies such a subject." And Tiresias is not simply the Grail knight and the Fisher King but Ferdinand and Prospero, as well as Tristan and Mark, Siegfried and Wotan. In his feminine role he is not simply the Grail-maiden and the wise Kundry but the sibyl, Dido, Miranda, Brünnhilde. Each of these represents one of the three main characters in the Grail legend and in the mystery cults--the wounded god, the sage woman (transformed in some versions of the Grail legend into a beautiful maiden), and the resurrected god, successful quester, or initiate. Counterparts to them figure elsewhere; Eliot must have been conscious that the "Ancient Mariner" and "Childe Roland" had analogues to his own symbolism.
In adopting fertility symbolism, Eliot was probably influenced by Stravinsky's ballet Le Sacre du printemps. The summer before writing The Waste Land he saw the London production, and on reviewing it in September he criticized the disparity between Massine's choreography and the music. He might almost have been sketching his own plans for a work applying a primitive idea to contemporary life:
Throughout one’s life, he or she will encounter an opportunity that will likely impact his or her perspective on a given situation. In Waste Land, Vik Muniz embraced the opportunity to travel to Jardim Gramacho in Brazil in hopes of making a difference with the pickers by incorporating the pickers as assistants for the art projects. While at the landfill in Rio de Janeiro, he experiences the life of the pickers which helps him to create the art that will transform the lives of the workers; these experiences allow Muniz to develop as a person (Walker). Vik Muniz’s perspective regarding the landfill and the pickers evolved from expressing pity to embracing the pickers as a group of friends.
Eisenhower’s military experience (one of the key reasons for him leading the Allies into Operations Overlord, Torch, and Avalanche) started when he was sent to boot camps around the U.S. to prepare troops for World War I. Eisenhower, despite his wishes, never saw foreign action in World War I, but he did have many stations where he trained. He was assigned to deploy to France, but a week before he was set for departure, the armistice ending World War I was signed. In turn, h...
"Surgery to Reduce the Risk of Breast Cancer Fact Sheet - National Cancer Institute." National Cancer Institute. National Institutes of Health. Web. 06 Jan. 2014. .
Anthony was born in 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts (Lutz). Her father owned a cotton mill and, along with his wife, devoutly practiced Quaker faith (Lutz). Anthony’s upbringing in Quaker religion instilled in her strong values. Religion taught her that men and women were equal before God, which heavily influenced her later work as an activist (Lutz). The Quakers also prized hard work, charity, education, and righteousness, which shaped Anthony’s character and values.
In 1843, an ex-slave named Isabella Baumfree, heard the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to her. He instructed her to take on a new mission of preaching the people to abstain from sin and to change her name to Sojourner Truth (Sojourner Truth PBS). Sojourner left New York City where she had lived working as a housekeeper and going to spiritual gatherings for the past 15 or so years of her life. Traveling up the Connecticut River Valley, Truth gave speeches on rights for women and slaves as an itinerant preacher (Voices of the Civil War). Her work as an abolitionist and women’s rights activist made a difference for African-Americans, women, and the Union during and around the time of the Civil War.
...e state of waste is not perpetual, we can find strength and hope for a better future. The ability to convey these messages with such strength along with the ability to powerfully effect his audience and have a tangible effect on the world is what sets T. S. Eliot and The Wasteland apart, and truly gives his poetry the power to change the world.
4) "The Facts on Violence Against American Indian/Alaskan Native Women." n.pag. Futures Without Violence. Web. 11 Mar 2014..
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.
Delta Airlines has been a vibrant company in the airline industry, with great success over the years. Delta airlines started as a crops dusting company to serving more than 572 destinations, in 65 countries on six continents (Allan, H., David. H. ,2012). Delta airline moved its headquarters from Monroe, Louisiana to the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The great management strategies have portrayed from time to time to be fruitful even in the verge of a recession. With these consistency in delivery of services, it is clear that the company is out to outdo its competitors and turn out to be the greatest airline in the world.
...generations. If it is a beneficial mutation, then it will likely not only pass on through reproduction, but those offspring will have better odds of reproducing in order to “spread” that trait onto future offspring. This is the process of natural selection. If there are enough changes or the change is drastic enough, a new species can evolve. So, evolution comes about as a result of changes to DNA and some of those changes to DNA can come from external factors such as environment, climate, and culture.
The influence of World War I was also seen in Eliot’s work. According to Johnson, “…artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" (1922)” (1). Eliot’s writing in “The Waste Land” depicts scenes of war and also ties into the destruction of western culture.
There are a number of these images in the works. Many of Picasso's are fairly evident the burning man in the right corner for example or the severed head on the bottom. These show the devastation of the world, as we know it. Eliot has recurring images not unlike these in The Waste Land. Eliot continually refers to the unnatural lack of water in the wasteland or the meaningless broken sex in the society of his day.
...to subjects relevant to today, such as religion.Eliot argues that without religion we are all lack direction and more importantly we lack substance in our lives. Without religion, we are superficial and it is due to this that we turn to pop culture. Pop culture is a filler for that which is intellectually rewarding. Eliot recognized this and for this reason he wrote “The Wasteland”. Eliot’s poem made bold statements about what was really happening in the modern world. Whether one argue with Eliot’s positions or not, his work joins the canon of the classic and ironically provides an opportunity for readers to plug into something greater.
On the most superficial level, the verbal fragments in The Waste Land emphasize the fragmented condition of the world the poem describes. Partly because it was written in the aftermath of World War I, at a time when Europeans’ sense of security as well as the land itself was in shambles, the poem conveys a sense of disillusionment, confusion, and even despair. The poem’s disjointed structure expresses these emotions better than the rigidity and clarity of more orthodox writing. This is evinced by the following from the section "The Burial of the Dead":
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.