What The Thunder Said T.S.Eliot page 556 notes

It refers to the Hindu religion, here the message of God refers to a Thunder. In this section there are three themes:

The journey of Christ's disciples to Emmaus after the Resurrection

The approach to the Chapel Perilous in the Holy Grail legend

The present decay of Eastern Europe

Here there is a different regist in comparison from the first section "The Burial of Dead", here we have an almost surrealistic landscape with the efforts of an individual purification.

At line 1 and 2 the reader can come across the elements which refer to Christ's death on the night Jude betrayed him, it can also refer to the generation of the land. The landscape is red, which implies sterility; people are suffering and they make a lot of efforts.

At line 4 Eliot communicates to the reader the idea of pain, in order to underline their inability to communicate.

From line 10 the reader can come across the contraposition of water and rock, the two objective correlatives. In these lines surface the desire of water, which mean that there is no life, no survival, no regeneration and finally no hope.

Line 15 underlines the idea of suffer, here life is referred to the minimum.

Line 17 implies that people try to imagine something impossible; this creates a surrealistic effect, suggested by the two objective correlative water and rock.

At line 18 the reader can find the alliterative sound of "m". According to Eliot people have lost humanity in the waste land.

At line 23 there is the repetition of the sound "s"; it underlines people who ridicule others. They are bad-tempered.

From line 39 to line 42 people are walking and they think that there is a ghost near them, they are unable to understand who he is.

At line 43 Eliot says that the figure near them has a brown mantle.

At line 44 Eliot underlines the inability of people to recognize who is near them. From line 46 to line 51 Eliot describes that they are looking up to the sky.

At line 52 people are walking as a group, but they are fragmented, they never see the end: This implies the vane efforts that people are making. Going on reading Eliot says that they see the tower of the most important cities.

At line 57 Eliot describes the people arriving into a Church in which there are no windows, but there is only a door which swings.

At line 67 there is another scene, the reader is in India, and here Gange is arid that implies drought.

From line 70 Eliot uses the Thunder in order to make the people understand that they are bad-tempered, and they don't help the other, they think always about themselves.

At line 89 there is an example of a boat, going on there is the description of the sailor, who is expert with sail and Eliot underlines that the sea is calm.

At line 27 there is a quotation from Dante's Inferno; at line 28 there is a quotation from Pervigilium Veneris, it refers to the hope for renewal. And at line 31 there is another quotation from Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.

The poem finishes with "Shantih shantih" which means the "Peace which passeth understanding".