WHAT THE THUNDER SAID (exercises)

•§  Underline examples of alliteration, repetition and onomatopoeia:

Examples of alliteration: line 5: prison and palace ; line 8: we who were ; line 23: sneer and snarl; line 47: murmur of maternal lamentation.

Examples of repetition: lines from 1 to 3: after ; lines from 26 to 29: repetition of the words rock and water.

Examples of onomatopoeia: line 24: mudcracked; line 37: drip drop drip drop drop drop drop .

COMPREHENSION

•§  Focus on the three themes of the section, as explained in the introduction. Find references to the in the text. Line 39: Who is the third who walks always beside you? This memory is associated with the journey of Christ's disciples to Emmaus; they did not recognize the man who went with them as the resurrected Christ. Line 60: there is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. Such line reminds the approach to the Chapel Perilous in the Holy Grail legend. Last but not list: lines from 53 to 56: falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal. These line are strictly connected to the present decay of Eastern Europe.

•§  Examples of images associated with sterility: Here is no water but only rock (line 10); there is not even silence in the mountains (line 20); but there is no water (line 38); violet air (line52).

INTERPRETATION

•§  What is the Thunder's advice? The Thunder anticipates the rain, in such section people wait for them as a symbol for regeneration because there is no water in the world.

•§  What do you think "these fragments" are? With "these fragments" Eliot refers to all his references which set the poem and generate the general atmosphere of fragmentation.

•§  The journey has come to an end. What final message is conveyed in the concluding lines? Why do you think the last words are in Sanskrit? In the concluding lines T.S. Eliot seems to suggest people to do their best even if the situation is complicate. The decision to bring words from Sanskrit conveys the idea of a global vision of life. Maybe other points of view could bring hope in our lives.

•§  What is your reaction to Eliot's experimental poetry and the mass of notes you need (or do not need) in order to understand it? Eliot's poetry is reach of references. It is a great example of intertextuality and this is the reason why it is very difficult and complicate. Readers must be clever and pay attention reading every word and every line.

•§  What causes obscurity in Eliot's poetry? Obscurities are due to the suppression of "links in the chain"; concentrated images in order to Eliot must coincide into a unique and intense impression.

•§  In what ways are the modernists Eliot, Woolf and Joyce similar? They conceive poetry as a mean of communication, it must be impersonal and it also represents an effort to produce a mass culture. They want the reader to be active and clever, he or she must pay attention on details and he also must imagine all what he or she is reading, because it is usually express through similes and strange images. They also communicate feelings without any filter in order to make the reader feel what they really wanted to convey him.