Comprehension
- Focus on the three of the section, as explained in the introduction. Find references to them in the text.
o The journey of Christ's disciples to Emmaus after the Resurrection:
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

o The approach to the Chapel Perilous in the Holy Grail legend:
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

o The present decay of Eastern Europe:
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

- Circle all the images associates with sterility.
The images, which are associated with sterility, are:
o The agony in stony lace
o Rock
o Sandy road
o Without water
o Sweat is dry
o Sterile thunder
o Mudcracked houses
o Dry grass singing
o Decay hole
o Empty chapel
o Ganga was sucken
o Arid plain

Interpretation
- What is the Thunder's advice?
The words of the thunder seem to tell that humans have never been ready to give. So, the reader understands that humans are too egoistic and people have always existed to protect themselves from something and they protect what they posses. In addition, the thunder recalls individuals cannot have compassion because they are imprisoned within their own egoism. In conclusion, the thunder tells about control, which it implies a series of domineering relationships.
- What do you think "these fragments" are?
I think "these fragments" are the quotes that Eliot uses to show the present decay of Eastern Europe.
- The journey has come to an end. What final message is convey in the concluding lines? Why do you think the last words are in Sanskrit?
The poem ends with a series of disparate fragments from a children's song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final chant of "Shantih shantih shantih"-the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates this chant as "the peace which passeth understanding," the expression of ultimate resignation. It is important that the last words of the poem are in a non-Western language: Although the meaning of the words themselves communicates resignation ("peace which passeth understanding"), they invoke an alternative set of paradigms to those of the Western world; they offer a glimpse into a culture and a value system new to us-and, thus, offer some hope for an alternative to our own dead world.
- 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'?
I found it difficult to understand this text without the use of notes, because there are many quotes that alone would not have recognized.
- Eliot wrote that modern poetry must be difficult, as he himself explained. What causes obscurity in Eliot's poetry?
The obscurity in Eliot's poetry is due to the suppression of links in the chain, of explanatory and
connecting matter.