Influences in the Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

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The 1920’s are often referred to as the roaring twenties. It is customarily described as the golden age, boisterous and wild time period (Meredith 51). Contrary to this popular belief, authors, T.S Eliot, Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald described this time period differently. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land vividly describes the very state the world was found in after World War I. Eliot examines the way the land is left desolate, and the way the people act and live. Both the novels The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises exemplify the ideas and concepts Eliot describes. Characters in these works represent solipsism, ennui, lack of values and conditions found in The Waste Land. Ezra Pound wrote, “Pound's greatest service to Hemingway may well be directing him to Eliot's poetry just when The Waste Land made Eliot the dominant poet of Literary Modernism” (Flora 2012). Eliot’s writing greatly influenced many writers of his time period and there after. The beginning of The Waste Land begins by describing a scenery, “April is the cruellest month,” (Eliot 5) this exemplifies the season change and how it bares all of the imperfections that the snow shielded. Dead trees and unpleasant sights are exposed. This is true not only for physical surroundings, but also spiritually as well. People buried their thoughts and feelings much like the snow did the unpleasant landscape. People ignored the condition of their atmosphere and revealed no emotion or effort to change it. People can become so far removed from their environment making them indifferent to what goes on around them. Rather than working to put the shattered remnants back together, they retracted from society and their emotions instead. They bare no feelings, thoughts or p... ... middle of paper ... ...le but change is possible. The most important piece of the poem is that even in the darkest times you can emerge and move forward. At the end of The Sun Also Rises , Brett states that her and Jake would have had a good time with one another, Jake replies with, “ Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (Hemingway 251). This signifies that Jake has been able to grow and begin to encompass the values. Jake has demonstrated that people can evolve and that there is hope for all. At the end of The Great Gatsby a similar situation occurs. Nick comes to the conclusion that he can choose his destiny and he does not have to be like the careless people that surrounded him. The novel ends with,“ So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Fitzgerald ). Each work is about a journey that leads to a common consensus, that there is still hope.

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