Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land is a little poem written in 1922 by T.S. Eliot. It is made up of V parts. Now I am going to analyze the first section.
The Waste Land starts with a quotation taken from and epigraph, both in Latin and in Greek.
"For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked the Sibyl, 'what do you want?' she answered 'I want to die."
The Cumean Sibyl is taken from the Satyricon by Petronio. She is a prophet, she can foresee the future, she has no age and lived in a Greek colony. Most important she is able to be man and woman alike: she represents humanity.
The title of the first section is "I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD".
We find intertextuality. As a matter of fact Eliot talks about April, just like Geoffrey Chaucer. But there is a difference: Chaucer speaks good about the month, Eliot describes April as the cruellest month. In the side of nature April brings rebirth and hopes. In The Waste of Land, everything seems turned inside out: Eliot deconstructs stereotypes. Lilacs are flowers usually used in funerals (death), they are not connected with spring. But, how can a dead land generate flowers? It's a paradox. We find another paradox in line 5 "Winter kept us warm". Winter is a cold season. Why does Eliot say that winter keeps people warm? Because in winter people look for warm so they stay at home near the fire place. This keeps people warm, it protects people that don't go out, they don't communicate. Seasons represent the circle of life. The land Eliot is talking about is sterile. The poet mixes memory and desire, past and future. This is a modern concept of time: present is the sum of past and future, there is a simultaneous concept of time. The poem is organized through the juxtaposition of scenes (dramatic effect), this conveys an atmosphere of not understanding. At the end of the first part of the first section we find a first person narrator who is remembering about his/her childhood. In the poem we find the semantic fields of nature (April, lilacs, roots, spring, rain...) , death (waste, dead, lilacs, winter, dried...) and nutrition/regeneration (breeding, mixing, stirring, roots, spring...). In conclusion The Waste Land talks about nature and seasons to talk about life and human existing.