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Although, Robert Frost and T.S Eliot choose the Grail quest as a “momentary [to] stay against confusion,” and both include depression, fragile images to illustrate the chaotic and decaying modern world, the differing way of use these images renders T.S. Elliot’s poem much more better of capturing the idea of the “broken world” than Robert Frost does.

First of all, both Robert Frost and T.S Eliot attempt to write about the feeling of depression from the survivor of the war in order to explore the meaningless of life after the crisis. Robert Frost, in his poem, chooses to remember the past and forget the current present. The beginning of “Directive” begins with a sudden instruction from the speaker: “Back out of all this now too much for us/ Back in a time made simple by the loss/ Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off.” (248) This instructive voice directing the reader to get away from the present “now” because of its complexity. Rather than staying at the present, the voice suggests the reader to retreat back into the past, to the time of simple. In a sense, perhaps, Robert Frost, through the speaker, wants to lead the audience away from all the problems and depression emotions resulted out of the great war. On the other hand, T.S. Eliot does not choose to turn back into the past in the poem “The Waste Land.” Instead, the speaker in his poem rather tries to forget the good memories of the past and accepts to stay with the sorrow in the present. At the first section of the poem, “The Burial of the Dead- The Waste Land” the speaker said that “April is the cruelest month,” because it “breeding” Lilacs from the dead land with “mixing memory and desire.” (378) Often, April is the changing season that represent the time of life an...

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...he revelations of the poem “in a flash of lighting. Then a damp gust/ Bringing rain.” (389) The Grail hero then becomes the Grail King himself so that he can heal himself; so he can save himself. “I sat upon the shore/ Fishing, with the arid plain behind me…/ These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” (390-91) Becoming the King himself, the speaker understand that he cannot save his chaotic and decaying world. He also cannot create out hopes and purpose for people with meaningless life. However, he can choose to resolve his inner conflicts. He can rebuilt his own place and find his own peace, as like the chanting word “Shantih shantih shantih” said by the thunder at the end. (391) Not only the speaker, but T.S. Eliot also suggest this resolution for every reader and people who is still under the mist of confusing and hopeless in the modern 20th century world.