Question : Essay-type
Examine the mood and imagery of the monumental poem ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S. Eliot.
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| T. S. Eliot [1888-1965] |
Introduction
W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden remain to be greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. They wrote both poetry and drama. Eliot was also a great critic. His contribution to the English literary criticism is as great as his contribution to English poetry and English poetic drama. Myths are popular beliefs of ancient culture. In Eliot’s poetry, allusions to past literatures, myths and legends all acquire symbolic significance.
The Waste Land : A Series of Five Poems
Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ is a series of five poems namely–
(1) The Burial of the Dead,
(2) A Game of Chess,
(3) The Fire Sermon,
(4) Death by Water, and
(5) What the Thunder Said.
Theme : The First Part
According to a critic, Eliot’s remedy of ritual sacrifice suggests that the modern materialistic man has become materialistic and is devoted to money-making. To the spiritualist, man without a soul is dead. And the dead is buried in his grave. So, materialism has buried the spiritual world. As such the world has become a Waste Land particularly the Western, Materialistic World.
The Second Part
The second part of the poem represents the mentality of the modern materialistic woman. A modern woman considers her life ‘a game of chess’ in which she is playing with a man as a co-player. She wants to defeat him in the game and keep him under her command till another lover arrives–
“And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.”
The Third Part
The influence of sensualism on the modern life forms the main theme of the third movement. The speaker sees ‘white bodies naked on the low damp ground’. Promiscuity in sex, indiscriminate sex, homosexuality, perversion in sexual behavior have been vividly described in the third part of the poem. The city has become sexually hot so much that it is almost burning in the blame of sexual lust.
The speaker says that since people have forsaken religion and denied God, the world has become a waste land. Sensualism and agnosticism prevail all around. A series of visions comes out to the speaker.
The Waste Land : A Mythical Framework
In ‘The Waste Land’ Eliot provides a mythical framework in which the past and present stand side by side. Eliot has vehemently and forcefully criticized and condemned modern materialism and also suggested remedies. This technique employed by Eliot has made his poem an extremely beautiful piece of literary art.
Conclusion
So we find that Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’ has blended together the past and the present, the west and the east, the accident philosophy and oriental thought. There is the Grail legend, there is Greek mythology and there are Biblical references. He believes in the complexity. It is his most celebrated poem on account of its successful use of myths and symbolism.
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Related Question
Examine the mythical technique of Eliot in ‘The Waste Land’.
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