Textual analysis of The Burial of the Dead

The Burial of the Dead is the first section of T.S. Elliot’s poem The Waste Land which is published in 1922. At the beginning of the poem the intelligent reader identifies a quote from Pretonio’s  Satyricon. The main theme of the quotation is the dead, indeed Sibyl’s is to die. The Sybil is a mythological women who had the immortality but not the perpetual youth. 

In the second order there is a dedication “for Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro” , the dedication makes reference to Ezra Pound’s support in the draft of the poem. The poem is a dramatic monologue in which the reader enter into the consciousness of somebody that it is one or more character. The poem consist of a a series of scene juxtaposed

Just reading the title of the section the reader could understand that T.S. Elliot has a pessimistic idea of the word in addition the first image of the poem represents a desolate April. “April is the cruellest month” the association between April and the superlative cruellest create a strange reaction to the reader indeed the adjective cruel remind to a violence in opposite traditionally Aril is link to spring. Spring is the season of the ri-born of the nature. The first verse of The Waste Land remind to the beginning of  G. Chaucer’s poem The Canterbury Tales “When in April the sweet showers fall”. In this firs verse Chaucer connoted April like sweet in argument with tradition. In the following verses Elliot recreated the image of the nature which has the capacity to “breeding Lilacs out of the dead land”, in opposition to the incapacity of the world to generating new values the nature can re-born every year. For this reason April is the cruellest month. The lilacs are the flower usually use in the funeral, together with the following word dead this word makes reference to the title of the sequence.

In the second image the speaking voice speaks about a memory. Now the subject change from a singular subject in to a plural one.  The reader understand that also the setting is chance; the season is the summer and the speaking voice are in Austria. The scene is link to religion because the two protagonist of the image took refuge in a bar because it was raining. The water of rain is the water of the baptism, people getting wet and they become new people. And the same signified have the word of the second person Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.  She is not only one persona but have a multiple personality.

Then there are a retrogression, the speaking voice now remand her (because in this scene the speaking voice is a women) childhood, she was in an aristocratic home with her cousin in winter. This scene is an everyday scene, Elliot literature speaks about life.