The Waste Land is a complex poem by T.S.Eliot which consists in five sections. The poem is a dramatic monologue, there is narrator's voice that does not coincides with poet's one.

The poem opens with the epigraph(in Greek, language important for the western society) taken form Petroious Satyricon in which the Sybil, woman who ages but never died, looking at the future wants to die. This is also a way how T.S. Eliot sees his society and his work, there is no hope because the culture is in a decline but it will not expire. This idea is also reinforced by the reference to the myth and fertility,important theme of J.Fraser's The Golden Bough and J. Weston's From Ritual to Romance , especially to the legend of the Fisher King whose sterility destined his land to be a "waste land". Although there was a solution in the legend, T.S. Eliot does not see any solution for his contemporary society in decline. This is also represented by Trimalchione who told the Sybil's story.

The poem is dedicated to Ezra Pound, father of imagist poetry(kind of poetry which developed in the early years of 20th century which uses the linguistic and emotional power of the images). He dedicated the poem to Ezra Pound because he was one of the most important persons with whom T.S. Eliot was in contact and also, Ezra Pound suggested him to cut some of the poem's parts, the most narrative parts so the plot is reduced to minimum.

Important theme is an intertextuality because T.S. Eliot makes reference to different texts.

Also the them of ritual and myth is important because there are also references to the Pre-Christianity habits,e.g. the idea of exchange between the divinity and people (Sybil) present also in The Faust by Marlowe and The Faust by Goethe. One of the most common rituals is the dinner (Trimalcione's dinner).

The land of the poem is waste, sterile, but it also represent a society, nature, so there is also a theme of loneliness, it is not living but surviving.

The first section is The Burial of the Dead and right from the title the theme of death is in a privileged position. The title is taken from a religious service, the funeral service of Anglican Church and the full the service in The Order for the Burial of the Dead. But also, it recalls pre-christian myths of ancient civilizations ane the burial king's effigy as a sacrifice. In addiction it may recall to the planting of a dry seeds that may sprout. So there is idea of metamorphosis and transformation (life, death and resurrection) because the April the month of the Christ's resurrection. In spring the nature should go through a re-birth and according to the Christian religious the dead, that have been good, should resurrect. In this way he makes a parallel between the pre-christian time and contemporaneity.

In the first line, the april is seemed as the cruelest month, and this is opposite vision of G. Chauncer's The Canterbury Tales the first poet to use the english language for the literary purposes because he affirmed that the April was the sweetest month. T.S. Eliot's vision is due to his consideration that the April promises a renewal that does not cam and people hope for something that will not take place. The vision of nature given by T.S. Eliot is negative because the nature instead of bringing nice flowers and blossoming, it gives lilacs that recalls death(priests' dresses are purple). The lilacs are similar to the hyacinths (line 35) that represents death. The land mixes memories and desires, past and the future, so there is simultaneous concept of time. The expression in the first lines,e.g "dead land","dull roots", recall sterility, that means that the land is not fertile even if the rain try to bring them back to life. The warmth is associated to the winter because in that period people try to stay inside, feel safe and protected hiding form the life and without facing the problems.This is Eliot's vision of his contemporary society, the world without ideals, hopeless in opposition to the fertile past. There is also a image of snow that gives protection to the earth(typical modernist theme) that seems to have forgotten his real role. The life presented is a "little life" of poor people, there are no ideals, no heroes. They are anti-heroes, lost people, in opposition to he Middle Ages considered as a source of culture by T.S. Eliot: it was a period when there were iedals, beliefs and values.

The poem proceeds by the juxtaposition of scenes that are kept together by the same atmosphere of desolations and anthropologycal intextual links.

In the next scene the arrival of the summer surprises people, so the reader can see that people are not aware of what happens around them. There is also a shower of rain that surprise them.From their everyday actions: going for a walk, having a coffee,reading during the night, goining to the south during the winter the reader can see that they belong to the aristocratic class. In the line 12 there is quotation in German that means: "I am not Russian at all; I am from Lithuania, a pure German" pronounced by countess Mary Larisch and the line presents the characters that seems to not have roots anywhere. Afterwards he will call them "empty people".

Especially, the first part of poem is made up pf intertextual quotations and T.S. Eliot uses a collage technique, and lines 14 to 17 seem to be taken from Mary Larisch's autobiography My Past. And the collage technique, scenes without rational links make the reading difficult.

In the 3^rd scene the poet asks the reader : “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow/Out of this stony rubbish?”. This is a rhetorical question because there are no plants and trees that can grow up there. But T.S. Eliot answers that the reader can not response because he does not know enough about the land and he gives some images that highlight its sterility: "dead tree","no relief","dry stone no sound of water". The line 30 "I will show you fear in a hanful of dust", recalls the theme of death, because every man after his death will become a dust. These are also the images of the waste land.

In the next four lines T.S. Eliot reports in German the first verses from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde that means:“Fresh blows the wind / To the homeland / My Irish child / Where do you wait?”. They represents the opening scene of Wagner's poem when Isolde on her way to the Ireland hears a sailor singing the verses. The reader should imagine that the final episode of the scene would not been happy because Wagner's poem has not got it. After the verses poet introduces a "hycinth girl" that may represent one of women he loves, and he remembers that he did not know anything in front of the girl he loved. And the last verse of episode taken from the Wagner's poem: "Desolate and empty the sea" makes understands that the love failed, as well as Tristan's one.

In the next scene the poet presents a new character, Madame Sosostris, tarot, who predicts the future.Obviously T.S. Eliot transformed the predictions for his purposes, so every card has a specific meaning. Important is a car of drowned Phoenician Sailor because it symbolizes death and the water in this case is not seemed as source of life. But the tarot could not find the Hanged Man which symbolizes the sacrifice of the god who was killed in order that his resurrection may bring fertility to his land and people. The absence of the card may represent the absence of hope and solution for the poet's contemporary society. This concept is highlighted by the "crowds of people, walking round a ring" that is similar to the anecdote told by Gabriel in The Dead when his grandfather's horse was circling around a statue. It presents the impossibility of people to control they life.

The last scene of first section introduces "Unread City" that recalls Baudelaire’s “fourmillante cite” where a crowd of people was crossing over a London Bridge. He inserts two quotation from Dante's Inferno translating them in English : "I had not thought death had undone so many/

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled "(lines 63-64). The people of London were paragoned to the people of Hell, almost dead people who did not have awareness of their action. He recognizes in the crowd Stetson, his friend during the war. In the poem is presented the First Punic War, instead of World War I, but this may represent the eguality of all wars. He made him some questions without getting answers, but that questions recalled the idea of human circle (life,dead,resurrection) presented in the title of the section. But not only all the wars are the same, also all the people are the same because T.S. Eliot speaks to the reader reporting the last phrase of Bouldare's Fleurs du Mal preface: "hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frère!" where Bouldare accuses the reader for sharing his sins.