The Waste Land is a modernist poem written by T.S. Eliot in 1922. While Eliot was writing the poem, he showed it to Ezra Pound, an American poet who moved to England. Ezra suggested Eliot to remove the narrative parts of his poem, Eliot followed Ezra's advice, and after lot of trouble he succeeded to publish The Waste Land. 

The poem is structured into five sections and they are titled:

1. The Burial of the Dead

2. A Game of Chess

3. The Fire Sermon

4. Death by Water

5. What the Thunder Said

The text is also followed by several pages of notes, where the poet wants to explain the complex metaphors, references and allusions. 

The title of the poem suggests an idea of destruction, desolation and death. The title maybe alludes to the modern life, that is full of futility and characterized by a cultural degradation, where human being doesn't take care of culture. 

The poem starts with an epigraph taken by Petronio's Satiricon.  Literally, this passage in Latin reads as follows:  "I myself once saw, with my own eyes, the sibyl of Cumae hanging in a cage; and when the boys asked her: "What wouldst thou prophesy, Sibyl? She replied: "I want to die." Right from the start the intelligent reader can understand that the poem will deal with death. 

After the epigraph there's a dedicatory line: For Ezra Pound " Il miglior fabbro" . As I have said before Ezra Pound helped T.S. Eliot to edit and also publish this poem, so Eliot addresses the poem to him. Besides Ezra's help signed an important turning point, from narrative method to the mythical method in poetry.  Eliot quoted "il miglior fabbro" from Dante's Divina Commedia. Eliot considerers Dante as the best poet ever, because of his use of language. 

The title of the first section point out the mytological structure. The title recalls to the religious ritual of funeral. As a matter of fact death is a beginning of a new life. The hole Christian religion is based on Life, death and rebirth. 

The Burial of Dead is based on the juxtaposition of four scenes, each of them from a different speaker prospective. Eliot start with an unusual description of April, making a reference to J. Chauser's The Canterbuty Tales. He says that April is the cruelest month, before it's the time when the land produces the firsts plants. But the regeneration is painful, because it remember a more fertile past. The words like "dull roots", "dried tubers" describe a very inhospitable land, where nature doesn't produce life, but kills everything. In this part there are two important opposite elements: Rock and water. The first one represent death, while the second is the symbol of purity and fertility From the 8th verse there's a woman who speak, who's name is Marie; she tells her childhood memories.  

The second stanza recalls the first lines, and Eliot describes a scene of sterile and deed nature (roots that clutch, dead tree, the dry stone no sound of water).  There's only a desert land that offers no protection from the sun, and no water. This scene suggest an surrealist and nonsence condition, that can be the metaphor of the modern life. From line 31, Eliot switch to German and quoted Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The next scene is about hyacinth girl, that has a nihilistic attitude to life. She's no dead neither life. After her Eliot present Madame Sosostris, a famous fortuneteller. She's known all over Europe for her ability to read the tarot cards. Eliot in this scene allude to superstition and to the degradation of the modern culture. 

In the last sequence T.S. Eliot describes the unreal city. The poet describes London City in a foggy day where death alienated people walk.  Each member of the mass keeps his eyes on his feet; the mass of men walk across the financial district of London. This scene evokes an idea of alienation. 

In the end of the poem the narrator seems to recognize a man named Stetson. The narrator states that Statson and him fought together in Mylae war, a battle took place during the First Punic War in 260 A.C. The battle signed the finally supremacy of the Western Culture   The speaker ask Stetson if the corpse he has planted last year in his garden has come into bloom. The intelligent reader can understand the allusion to re-generation and re-birth.