The Waste Land analysis

The Waste Land is a poem written by T. S. Eliot. This poem consists of 5 sections. The first is The Burial of the dead. It refers to a ritual that entered religion from primitive rights; it also refers to the concrete burial of the people in a metaphorical way: people look for protection against any possibility of leaving. It opens with the quotation from Petronius Satiricon in the Greek language, where the reader can come across Sibilla Cumana's words. In the quotation the Sibilla is asked by some young people what she wants and she answers "I want to die".

From the narrative level the poem has to move to the mythical level. Eliot's poetry is the result of the just-apposition of a series of scenes. They are kept together by the atmosphere and the myth and the ritual add unity to the poem.

In the first line Eliot is terming all the traditional concept of nature using intertextuality. He has taken the first line from the Canterbury Tales, in which Chaucer said that "April is the sweetest month". Eliot quotes Chaucer because he is the first poet who used English as a poetical language. Eliot says that April is cruel because it promises a regeneration that doesn't come, so April frustrates our expectations.

From line 1 to line 7 there is the first scene where Eliot describes April, saying that it doesn't help people to face life, because April is a cruel month.

From line 5 to line 18 the poet just- apposes another scene: children are caught by rain during the summer while they were at the Lake. It has the name of the king Ludwig II, who was drowned into the lake: so the lake becomes the symbolic image of what goes under the name "death by water". The idea of "death by water" is also connected to a quotation from "Tristan and Isolde" which the reader can come across in line 31-34 and 42 where the text hints at the figure of the Fisher King of the Graal Legend. Line 8 displaces the verb "surprised us", in order to introduce a new scene and a new season: summer. In the second scene is getting summer and it is the memory of two young people who are caught by the rain and they went under a colonnade in Munich. When the sun came out again they went to the public park, they had some coffee and they talked.

Then comes the Germanic line (12) which means "I'm not absolutely Russian, I'm from Lithuania, really German".

Going on there is a memory of childhood when the speaking voice together with her cousin was staying at the Archduke's home; the speaking voice remembers a scene when she went on a sled and she was frightened.

The scenes are kept together by a general atmosphere that seems to be the same.

From line 19 to line 24 the reader finds the scene of sterility. Here we have the idea of nature again. The lines also recall the Bible. There T. S. Eliot finds a very fertile container of symbols and images.

In the third scene the reader can come across a dry land. Even the roots seem to find no fixed point, they try to grasp at the land. Follows an intertextual quotation from the Bible from Ezekiel. Thanks to the quotation of Ezekiel, Eliot links together past and present. The sterile and an arid land, the reader perceives, is not simply to be understood on the naturalistic level ( sun, dead trees, cricket are all words belonging to the semantic field of nature). There is an idea of desolate land and a dead landscape. Inside the land there is somebody speaking to a "son of man" (line 20) but he knows that the man cannot answer the question. He lives in a word where everything seems to have lost unity, seems to be fragmented. Around this desolation the son of man can only see the sun which creates an arid sterile land which brings forth to dead trees. The land is dead, it cannot sprout. The cricket (line 23) is a typical part of nature, and it gives the idea of fragmented land. The idea of fragmented land becomes a metaphor, a symbol for an almost impossible generation.

At line 24, 25 the reader can notice two objective correlatives: water and rock.

At line 25 there is a metaphorical use of the language. The lack of life is an epiphany.

Al line 26 people are unable to face life. At line 27 and 28 Eliot sees the circle of a day as the metaphor of life.

Desolation is evidenced again at line 30 by the expression "Handful of dust".

From line 31 to line 34 the reader finds a german quotation from Tristan and Isolde, an impossible love story.

From line 35 to line 37 the reader can come across the repetition of the word "hyacinth". These flowers are in opposition with the sensations expressed in the following lines: "her eyes failed", she is neither alive nor dead and she doesn't know anything. Se finds only the silence and as expressed again by a Tristan and Isolde's quotation: the sight is bleak and empty. The ocean, the water are in opposition with aridity but they bring to death and to desolation too.

From line 43 to line 59 the speaking voice is a clairvoyante, who explains the cards she is picking up. The first card, the Sailor, is the symbol of "death by water": water again causes death. At line 48 the reader can come across a quotation from Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which pearls symbolize hope. The second card, Belladonna, represents either a beautifull woman or a deadly plant. The third card, the man with three staves, signifies to Eliot the "Fisher King", who tries to plant his fragile staves in the waste land. The fourth card, the wheel, represents the possibility of changes of Fortune. The fifth card, the one- eyed merchant, seems to show the possibility of compassions and charity. The last card, the blank, is what the merchant carries on his back, but the clairvoyante is forbidden to see what it is. Madame Sosostris goes on saying that she doesn't find the card of the "Hanged man". It might mean the lack of rebirth which Eliot fears.

At line 55 the reader finds again the "death by water". From line 56 to line 59 Eliot trough the words of Madame Sosostris tries to create an expectation. Maybe she will tell the oroscope later.

From line 60 to line 76 Eliot describes a city, an unreal city. Until line 68 Eliot presents an urban landscape with no defined surface. The unreal city might be London. It is unreal because it is not described.

At line 63 there is a quotation from Dante's Inferno: the poet describes a large crowd of people disgorged from somewhere. At line 64 Eliot refears to unbaptized people who are in Limbo.

At line 68 the bell of the church rings with a soumbre note, as a funeral bell. At line 69 Eliot calls one of the crowd. Eliot refers to him as if they have been together at Mylae's battle, during the Punic war; it is a sort of temporal collapse.

Then at line 70 Eliot refers again to nature. The corpse here is not buried, but planted and according to the writer it should sprout. After death there will be a new life.

At line 76, the last of the first section, T. S. Eliot quotes Baudelaire: the reader is called "hypocrite", but he is also the writer's brother. Either the reader or the writer are "hypocrites"