Reality

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Reality

Death is something we all fear at one point in our lives; it binds us together as mortal human beings, and eventually touches us all. But in our consumer driven society the subject of death is often times lost among our busy schedules. Personally, I never have dealt with a setting which gave me cause to fear for my life, and not many people in this day and age are faced with such a tremendous circumstance. But during Elliot’s lifetime, people were faced with the fear of death every day, and even every moment. The situation of the times was hard on everyone, and just like death, it brought all of the social classes together under one roof.

In T.S. Elliot’s The Wasteland death was immediately mentioned in the first (English) line (title of the first section), "The burial of the Dead." The line exemplifies a strong sense of reality and it justifies the title of the poem. Reality is one of Elliot’s strongest themes; he, by no means, skirts the issue of death. Looking over the first stanza, Eliot relates death to the people how they see it, and how it affects them. And it is here where it becomes apparent that Elliot wishes to relate his belief that death touches us all in the same way. The quote, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" is very powerful, because it sums up the fear of the people in those times. The quote itself signifies the dust bowl that swept the prairie between WWI and WWII. People were starving because of drought and depression; they had no money, and were forced to sell their homes, to go live in cities, where disease and famine caused countless deaths. Cities were overrun with people; jobs were scarce, and people’s lives were often times expendable in the work place. Child labor was commonplace because it was necessary to feed the family; the small children were employed for meager wages and performed jobs which often cost them their lives. It was a time in our history where many people lost hope, and despair was found everywhere. After reading such a depressing line, I found it incongruous that directly after that quote, Elliot wrote:

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind

Wo weilest du?

The translation of this piece states:

The Wind blows freshly

Towards the homeland

My Irish Child

Where are you roaming?

The two phrases that caught my attention were, "The Wind blows freshly/Towards the homeland.

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