Reading the title the intelligent reader can see how the adjective “waste” conveys the idea of something not fertile, sterile and doesn't give products. So, problably, the poem refers to a sterile land.

The poem opens with an epigraph from Satyricon of Petronio: the Cumaean Sibyl is the old prophetic women of Greek mythology; she guided Aenas through Hades. She asked immortality by Apollo, but she forgot to ask him for perpetual youth, so she became old and her authority declined.

The dedication is to Ezra Pound, who is called “il miglior fabbro”, because he had given him suggestions that created a new form of poetry.

“The Waste Land” consists of 5 sections and I'm going to analyse the first section: “The Burial of the Death”.

This title creates an atmosphere of sadness and death. The first line conveys the idea that there is something wrong: “April is the cruellest month”, but generally April is associated to spring and regeneration. This line recalls Chaucher's Canterbury Tales and creates an atmosphere of infertility, death and sterility.Spring is described as if were winter.

From sixtyth line T.S. Eliot gives us a scenery of desolation, comunicated by the description of people, who go to work every day and this scenery gives us also a ghostly atmosphere. People don't show any identity and, in this description, Eliot recalls the Dante's Inferno, where there are souls going to the death.

Eliot's people show a spiritual sloth, instead nobody had the courage to look into each others eyes. The references to geographical places provide the only reference to reality.

Eliot gives us also the possibilty to “hear” a dead sound: the sound of the bells of the church striking the hours.