The Waste Land: Isolation from a Noble Past
Desire to return to a noble past is a central theme of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The narrators of the poem consistently show dissatisfaction with the present, and describe, with yearning, the quality of the past; furthermore, Eliot portrays the contemporary world as irredeemably lost to the beauty of antiquity. In The Waste Land, the theme of isolation from a noble past is represented by descriptions of the environment, sexual corruption, and self-mechanization.
Eliot opens “The Fire Sermon” with a juxtaposition of antiquity and modernity that is centered around the Thames River. The mystical past of the river has been destroyed, and the speaker laments the current condition of his environment:
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the water of the Leman I sat down and wept (177-82)
Although this section is written in the present tense, the speaker means the Thames of the past. The Thames of the past was not polluted, and there were nymphs, giving it a mystical characteristic; however, these nymphs are departed now, and the river is nothing like it used to be. Eliot also juxtaposes different poetic styles to further distinguish the past from the present. Amid a group of unrhymed, rhythm-less lines, he writes, “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song” (175...
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...ing lost the sense of Good and Evil, has ceased to be alive” (46). This “living death” is seen very clearly during and immediately after the sexual encounter of the clerk and typist. Eliot uses desolation of environment as well to juxtapose past and present, especially when describing the “unreal city.” The destruction brought about by post-war modernity is rampant also in the description of the Thames River. Finally, Eliot shows the lack of vitality of modern people through their voluntary self-mechanization. The characters of the present in The Waste Land have no motivation to make, or live by, their own choices, and let the machine of life carry them where it may. The result is a stark depiction of the automation, isolation, and despair that define the contemporary world.
Work Cited
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. Collected Poems Harcourt : New York, 1963.
The statistics available on violence against women are startling. Domestic violence is the major cause of death and disability for European women ages 16 to 44 and accounts for more deaths and injuries than automobile accidents and cancer. The Russian government estimates that over 14,000 women were killed by family members in 1999, but there is still no legislation that specifically addresses domestic violence. In South Africa, more women are shot in the home by relatives than are shot on the streets or by intruders (web.amnesty.org).
Eliot, T.S. The wasteland. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1447-1463.
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Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot; a Poem by Poem Analysis. New York:
Brand, Russell. "Russell Brand and the GQ Awards: 'It's Amazing How Absurd It Seems.'" The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 13 Sept. 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. Russell Brand’s commentary and defense of what occurred at the GQ awards.
Eliot, T. S., and Michael North. The Waste Land: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Print.
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.
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.
Education is the main base for everyone in today’s society. There are several factors that could affect one's education. Statistics show that single sex schools have been shown to receive higher test scores than their coeducational counter-parts, therefore, one of the most important factors that could affect one's education is whether they attend a single sex or coeducational school. The separation of genders during education has been considered a great importance because it has been shown to be able to increase a student’s educational achievements and quality of his or her work. The use of single sex education has been used since the 19th century, with the common idea being that if boys and girls were separated during the school day, it would allow for fewer distractions in the classroom. To this current day, many people still believe in the use of single sex education, which is still being utilized in many areas of the United States. This issue is on a national level due to it being an issue that needs to be addressed by the whole country. In light of the increase of single-sex schools, the United States government must require schools nationwide to offer a less distracting environment without the opposite sex in all subjects, which provides each sex with greater self-confidence and higher academic success.
The Current Relevance of The Waste Land Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, is at least as relevant to life today as it was in 1922, when it was first published. All of the themes stated at the beginning of the Norton Anthology's introduction to the poem ("spiritual dryness," a lack of "regenerating belief" to give meaning to life, and death without resurrection) are with us to an even greater degree than they were at the time the poem was first published. (Introduction 2146) The attitudes toward sexuality that are implicitly condemned throughout the work have not changed in any way that Eliot would be likely to see as an improvement, either. "The Waste Land" does not merely present an anthropological description of a culture, however, and the solution proposed by Eliot seems as relevant today as it must have been in 1922.
In recent decades there has been a significant amount of research conducted for and against single-sex education. The choice between coeducational or single-gender schooling has various implications for the academic, psychological and social development of the student. Single-sex education is a normal practice in other countries due to cultural or religious beliefs. Single-gender education fell out of fashion in the United States in the 1970’s. It regained popularity in October 2006, when federal funding for single-sex classrooms in public schools as long as they as they are (1) voluntary and (2) of "substantially equal" quality content and teaching (Morin). Single-gender education may not be right for every student.
Ceremonies are prevalent throughout T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. Eliot relies on literary contrasts to illustrate the specific values of meaningful, effectual rituals of primitive society in contrast to the meaningless, broken, sham rituals of the modern day. These contrasts serve to show how ceremonies can become broken when they are missing vital components, or they are overloaded with too many. Even the way language is used in the poem furthers the point of ceremonies, both broken and not. In section V of The Waste Land, Eliot writes,
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.
The single-sex format creates opportunities that do not exist in the coed classroom. (Edison 1) Researchers are unaware that both genders brains function differently. This lack of knowledge may be why the real truth about single-sex education being more efficient than co-ed education has not been discovered. Some say single-sex education may be the key for a brighter generation. It shows to improve test score dramatically. The number of public schools experimenting with single sex classes is now reported to be more than 350. (Silva 130) Some research also shows that single-sex classes have a more welcoming atmosphere. Single-sex education improves grades while coed educations keep an average pace.
Hoffman, Bobby, B.A. Badgett, Parker, R. “The Effect of Single-Sex Instruction in a Large, Urban, At-Risk High School.” Journal of Educational Research 102.01 October 2008: 16-28. EBSCO 18 February 2014.