MB UNIUD

HERE IS NO WATER BUT ONLY ROCK

The extract is taken from Eliot's What the Thunder said, the last section of The Waste Land.

Looking at the structure the reader can immediately understand that the poem has no regular metre. As a matter of fact in the first part lines have many syllables, while in the second there are made up of only few words. Moreover there is no precise rhyme scheme. Also the lay-out has a symbolic meaning, even if you can't understand it if you have not read the poem. Anyway the first part of the extract, characterized by long lines and so by a "compact" lay out suggest the idea of the rocky landscape described in the scene. On the contrary the second part is made up of very short lives that convey the idea of a water-fall.

The opposition between rock and water is the main theme of the extract. In the first fifteen lines the landscape described is sterile, made up of rocks (the word rock is used six times), mountains and sand. There is no water (mentioned three times), everything is dry, even the storm has no rain (but only thunder). This landscape is so sterile that you can't even think, you can't even find solitude, because in this land life cannot exist. In this difficult situation the spaekig voice can imagine what some water could signify for him. So the second landscape is imaginary: the narrator tries to find a perfect land for him. He doesn't need the cicada and he can accept the presence of the rocks, but he wants water, he wants life, even the small and apparently insignificant life of a few grass.

The existence of the opposition between the two elements can be found also in the presence of two opposite semantic fields, whose key-words are exactly water and rock. The latter represents death and sterility and so its semantic field is made up of words such as "dead mountain", "sandy road", "carious teeth", "spit", "dry sterile thunder without rain", mudcracked house" and "sullen faces that sneer and snarl". In the first part of the extract the idea of sterility is conveyed by are quite long lines made up of hard-sounded words (such as rock, road etc.) and alliterations. The monotonous rhythm underlines the absence of life.

The key word "water" is connected to terms such as "spring", "pine trees", "drink", "hermit-trush" (a kind of bird) and "sound and songs". Moreover "Water" has a more melodious sound than "Rock", that underlines the positive aspect of the former. Water has always had many symbolical meanings, connected with religion (for example baptism and purification) and rural life (fertility, regeneration). In the poem it has also further meanings. At the beginning the term water is just used to convey an idea of the sterile landscape (absence of water means dryness). Then it represents a need of human beings (they must drink) but also their certainty, because where water is present people can stop and even think. Finally it represents a living and creative force, whose presence could change the waste land.

I think that the metaphor of rock and water (present in the whole poem) represent modern man's situation. Rocks represent the hard life connected to the loss of previous certainties. Human beings feel died and they have no opportunity  to stop and think aon what is happening. Water represents the lost certainty or Truth. The speaking voice imagine a world where a single absolute Truth still exist, and so where people can live and regenerate unpretentiously, where they can find a point of reference. But, as the speaking voice says, there is no water!