HOMEWORK

COMPREHESION

1.    Focus on the three themes of the section, as explained in the introduction. Find references to them in the text.

1.    Right from the title of the section “What the thunder said” refers to the Indian legend. In this part of the poem there are three themes: the journey of Christ’s disciples to Emmaus, the approach to the chapel Perilous in the Holy Grail legend and the present decay of Eastern Europe. The first theme is presented in the first section: “he who was living is now dead”. The rest of the first part, while making reference to contemporary events in Eastern Europe and other more traditional apocalypse narratives, continues to draw on Biblical imagery and symbolism associated with the quest for the Holy Grail and Eliot refers, in the seventh stanza, to a chapel: “There is the empty chapel..”

 The repetitive language and harsh imagery of this section suggest that the end is perhaps near, that not only will there be no renewal but that there will be no survival either. Cities are destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed, mirroring the cyclical downfall of cultures. So the third theme represented by Eliot with the description of Indian’s landscape.

INTERPRETATION

1.    What is the thunder’s advice?

2.    What do you think “these fragments” are?

3.    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?

4.    What is your reaction to Eliot’s experimental poetry and the mass of notes you need (or don’t need) in order to understand it?

5.    Eliot wrote that modern poetry must be difficult, as he himself explained: “any obscurity in the poem, on first readings, is due to…..”. What causes obscurity in Eliot’s poetry?

1.    The thunder reveals God’s speech. It speaks to God’s men and demons. Men interprets thunder’s advice to have compassion while demons interprets it to practice self control.

2.    “These fragments” are human’s feeling: hopes and believes. People have lost their point of referent so they can not believe in nothing.

3.    In my opinion Eliot’s message it’s a message of hope in the possibility of regeneration. To render this idea Eliot used Sanskrit’s words.

4.    Eliot’s poetry makes me understand that to appreciate poetry its very important to know past culture in order to understand the nowadays poetry. Poetry is very difficult so the reader has to compare and confront the poem to others.

5.    The obscurity is given by the multiple connection to the past text because the reader is supposed to know all the text that are quoted during the poem.