Analysis of The Burial of the Dead from The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a poem written by the Modernist writer T.S. Eliot. It is a dramatic monologue: the writer presents character's thoughts and feelings.
The poem is composed of five parts.
The first part is titled The Burial of the Dead, and it is composed of six scenes, connected throughout the desolate atmosphere but without a logical thread.
Right from the title, the reader expects the main theme will be death. The title is taken from a religious service in Anglican right, called "The order for the burial of the dead". The title has a more level of meaning: it also refers to the effige of a king, a god, as a sacrifice in the vegetation rights. It was a ryth before Christian religion to ingratiate the god of Fortune. Moreover in April there is Easter: Christ rises again to save human being.
So there are three levels of meaning in the title: a naturalistic level (nature in April should rebirth); a religious one (souls after death will rise again) and right of vegetation (the sacrifice). In this way the writer creates a parralel between the world before Christian one, the Christian world and contemporary world.
In the first line the narrator defines April as "the cruellest month". He refers to G. Chaucer, who was the first English poet who used English language for poetry purposes. He said that April was the sweetest month. T.S. Eliot's decision to turn that line upside down is due to his consideration that April promises a regeneration that does not come and people hope for something that will not take place. So it is a desolate vision.
In the following line, instead of having nice flowers, there are lilacs, that accompany the funeral service, so they are symbols of death. They bloom in a "dead land", that can not bring regeneration. The poet writes also that in this land Memory and desire are mixed: memory comes from the past, while desire is what people hope for future. They are mixed, as Modernist writers' thought.
Roots are dull: spring rain tries to give them life, but it is not able to do it.
In line 5 the writer associates winter to warmth: generally it may be considered a paradox, but Mr Eliot in this way explains that people hide themselves and do not want to face life, feeling protective and sure. He underlines the differences with the past world, full of ideals and values, when people fought to reach them, while in contemporary world men prefer to hide.
The world is covered by a forgetful snow: snow allows people to forget their life, it is protective but at the same time it makes people forget their real role. Moreover under it there are tubers and it gives them a little life: it is a reference to poor people's life, who have no ideals and values.
It follows that the first scene is characterized by an atmosphere of death, lifeless and a sterile land. Moreover Mr Eliot considers Middle Ages (Chaucer's period) as a period characterized by ideals and values, while in contemporary world people has lost everything.
The second scene begins with a reference to summer: there is not the logical order of seasons. Summer surprises people because they are not aware of what happens around them. There are many references to nature events, like the shower of rain. Hofgarten is a public park in Munchen, that Mr Eliot visited during his staying in this city. Here the protagonist did typical actions of a summer day as drink coffe and talk.
After this part there is a line in German, that means "I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, I am a real German". It is a quotation that recalls collage technique and unites a lot of characters that seem to have roots nowhere. The character underlines that she is not Russian because after the 1917 Revolution there is an interest into take distance from associations with International Bolshevism.
The quotation is clearer after reading the following lines: the writer juxtaposes memories and scenes and the protagonists are members of aristocracy. The thoughts belongs to a woman, Marie, and the reader can understand it because she remembers when she was staying at her cousin's, the archduke, and he took her on a sled. Marie may be the Countess Marie Larisch, who wrote a autobioghrapy titled My Past. Mr Eliot probably read it and he used her memories. So the reader finds many habits of aristocracy, as go south in the winter and read the whole night. The woman may be also unable to sleep because of the brutality of the First World War, underlining in this way the sterility and the emptiness of that world.
The third scene begins with two questions and there is another intertextual use of cultural sources. The poet uses a metaphor: the roots clutch as if the land was going to die, as men try to clutch to values in a world that is decaying. The earth is defined a "stony rubbish": the European cultural land is arid and dead, and no man tries to make it better because everyone prefers to hide. In this place there is no life because there is not water.
"Son of man" is a reference to the prophet Ezekiel. He wrote that God used it to address to him but it is also associated with Christ, whose death enabled the salvation of Man. Here the poet uses it to address to the reader.
In the following lines there are other images of lifless and death: the images man sees are broken and fragmented and they may also recall the scenes represented in the poem, that are juxtaposed without a logical thread. The broken images may also be the idols and the images of false gods that God asked Ezekiel to destroy.
In the arid and waste land there is only a shelter under a red rock: it is another reference to Bible, to the prophet Isaiah, who wrote that in a new kingdom a man should be "...as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land". Eliot suggests, through this allusion, that there is the possibility of a temporary relief from the desolate land. The shadows may also symbolize Death, that follows the man during the day and in the evening (the end of life) meets him to take him away with herself.
The fourth scene starts with some lines in German, that means "The wind blows fresh to the Homeland; my Irish girl, where are you lingering?". The lines are taken from R. Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, which main theme is love. It is a reference to love promises (spring is the season always associated to the birth of love) and the waiting and desire may be linked to the memory and desire of the first scene.
The narration goes on presenting another memory of the past: the girl received some hyacinths the year before: hyacinths symbolize resurrection and they recall the Greek myth reported by Ovidius in his Metamorphosis. So they symbolize hope and fertility, a wonderful land, in opposition with the waste land of the previous scenes.
The girl is seen from another point of view in the following lines: it is another memory, probably of girl's lover, who looks at her and forgets everything around him.
The scene ends with another line in German that means "Desolate and empty the sea". The quotation is taken from the end of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, recalling again a waste world: the sea is wide and there is nothing in it.
The fifth scene opens with another character and place. The poet writes about Madame Sosostris: the name is Egyptian and it is probably taken from Aldous Huxley's novel Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana, who dresses up as a gypsy to tell fortunes at a fair. Like in the novel, she has got Tarot cards and psychic powers, that make her famous in whole Europe. Presenting this character, the poet probably wants to underline people's belief in magic in a world of decaying, considering it as a solution for all the problems. In the following lines there is Madame Sosostris' fortune telling throughout the cards. The first one is the drowned Phoenician Sailor. In Phoenician religion there was the god Thammuz who died and resurrected (as Christ does), but the Sailor may be also linked to Bible story of Giona and the wale. The sailor has got two pearls instead of his eyes: there is the theme of death and transfiguration and it is probably a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tempest, when Ariel tells her son Ferdinand that his father drowned and he was transformed into "something rich and strange".
The second card represents Belladonna, the Lady of the rocks and of situations. Belladonna is a flower but it does not symbolize life because it is poisonous. It is also used in the preparation of cosmetics and it may be an allusion to the dangerous beauty of women, that may lead man to death.
The third card is the man with three staves, who may symbolize death and the fourth is the Wheel, that represents the Wheel of Fortune, that symbolizes the cycle of birth and death, prosperity and poverty. It recalls the cycle of the nature of the first lines of the poem.
The fifth card is the one-eyed merchant: merchants travel in many countries and see and know many things, but the one eye may signify a partial vision of life (that is also a feature of Mr Eliot's contemporary world) and of himself.
The last card Madame Sosostris does not find, is the Hanged Man. In the Tarots it is represented hanging from one foot from a T-shaped cross. He symbolizes the self-sacrifice of the fertility god who is killed in order that his resurrection may bring fertility once again to land and people. For his sacrifice and the life that comes from death, he may be recognized as Christ.
Again there is the water: in the third scene there is not water that brings life, while here it is seen as something that brings death. Moreover Madame Sosostris forsees a crowd of people that walks around a ring, without a destination: it iscomposed of Mr Eliot's contemporary men who have not a sense in their lives.
The woman refers to another woman and underlines that it is necessary to be careful in that period.
The sixth part begins with "unreal cities": it is a quotation from Baudelaire's The Seven Old Men and it underlines a society based on appearances and the emptiness of contemporary life. It is presented a winter dawn: winter recalls the protective atmosphere of the first part, while dawn should represent the birth, but it is characterized by brown fog that underlines the heaviness of city atmosphere. There is a crowd that walks on London Bridge: it symbolizes the contemporary men who do everyone the same actions without being aware of it. It also recalls what Madame Sosostris forsaw. They fixes their eyes on the floor, without looking around them: there is a reference to the first lines because man is not aware of anything. Their life is defined by an external time now: there is the "dead sound" of a bell that underlines it is nine. Here there is Modernist theme of the existence of an external time and of an inner one.
The character of this scene sees a man he knows in the crowd. He was with him on a ship in Mylae: there is the reference to Madame Sosostris' card about the Phoenician sailor and the writer refers here to the battle of the First Punic War between Romans and Carthaginians. Here there is the concept of timeless and the existence of the past in the present. There is another reference to the life from death: the sailor planted a corpse in the garden (death) but the character asks him if it blooms that year (birth). Moreover there is a reference also to Ancient Egyptian myth: the god Osiris was murdered and dismembered and the various pieces buried in different locations within the country. His wife, Isis, generally associated with the Nile, turned these graves into sacred places, and grain was planted over each of them and it bloomed each year. The myth provides yet another set of images of death leading to rebirth.
In the following lines the poet writes about a dog that may unbury the corpse: it is a reference to John Webster's The White Devil, and to Cordelia's lament for the "friendless bodies of unburied men". This image is a disturbed reflection of the death and rebirth theme that is the main theme of the section.
The last line of the section is in French and it means "Hypocrite reader, my fellow-man, my brother!". It is a quotation taken from Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, a collection of poems which speak of hypocrisy and corruption. It may underline the emptiness and the hypocrisy of Mr Eliot's contemporary society, with a link to the unreal cities.