The Waste land analysis

T.S. Eliot was a British writer and poet. His work was often full of symbols, philosophies, and vivid images. One of his well-known works is the poem "The Waste Land." It is a sad poem about women,

memories, nature, and

the seasons. There are many references to death, decay, and dead things in this poem. The women are the main characters, and they describe nature and their past memories. One thing each of these

women have in common is their sadness. All the women in the poem "The Waste Land" are completely different but seem to be cast from the same mould.

The first woman is named Marie. She seems depressed because it is April. The fun Winter is gone, and she calls April "the cruelest month" in the first line of the poem. The line says: "APRIL is the

cruellest month..." Marie also misses the warmth of Winter and the way it covered the earth in snow. This is in lines five and six of the poem, which read: "Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in

forgetful snow..." She also describes memories of sledding with her royal cousin, and she wants Winter to stay. This is in lines 13 to 16. They say: "And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,

My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went." Marie also mentions a corpse someone buried in a garden. She wonders if it will

sprout, but she is not serious. This is from lines 71 to 73: "'That corpse you planted last year in your garden, 'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? 'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?"

This only makes the sadness easier to see.

Lil is the second woman, and she is unhappy also. She hears a crying nightingale and is nervous in the cold. This woman hears strange noises, but it is only the wind. This passage is lines 111 and 117 to

120. These

lines say: "'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me." And "'What is that noise?' The wind under the door. 'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?' Nothing again nothing." In lines

115-116 of the poem, it talks about "rats' alley, where the dead men lost their bones." The lines read: "I think we are in rats' alley Where the dead men lost their bones." This is not a nice image and

proves the sadness of this passage.

In addition, it seems like the woman will die soon. In line 112 someone else without a name asks, "Why do you never speak?" Before this the woman also says, "Stay with me," like she is afraid to be

alone. Also, Lil does not take care of herself. According to line 157, which says, "(And her only thirty-one,) she is not old. Also, in line 145 she is supposed to get a new set of teeth, but she never gets

them. This comes from lines 145 and 156, which say: "You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set," and "You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique." There is a sense of decay and death in

both sections of this poem.

The third woman is even stranger than the other two. From lines 236 to 242, She is bored, but she lets a man assault her. She does not resist, but she does not like it either. These lines read: "The meal

is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His

vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference."

This is a disturbing part of the poem. And it is morbid, because it also talks about bones at the beginning. But in this section, the river is clean, but the Summer has gone, or died. This is in lines 177 to

179 and line 186, which read: "The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed."

And "The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear." This passage is like other dead things in the poem. Also, it seems like the woman is dead, even though her body is still alive. If she

were alive or concerned enough to care about what the man did to her, she would resist. However, she does not, and this is unnerving. The sadness and depression here tie her to the other women in

the poem.

In conclusion, everything in this poem is sad and dead. The people miss things that have passed or ended. They are also indifferent to what happens to them. The images and seasons are dark, cruel,

and desolate. This is

a hard poem to read because of the imagery and the dead things. But it is clear that Marie, Lil, and the unnamed woman in it are sad. Different things make them so, but they have that sadness in

common. Because of this, they all seem to be cast from the same mold.

Analysis

Eliot attributed a great deal of his early style to the French Symbolists—Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Laforgue—whom he first encountered in college, in a book by Arthur Symons called The

Symbolist Movement in Literature. It is easy to understand why a young aspiring poet would want to imitate these glamorous bohemian figures, but their ultimate effect on his poetry is perhaps less

profound than he claimed. While he took from them their ability to infuse poetry with high intellectualism while maintaining a sensuousness of language, Eliot also developed a great deal that was new

and original. His early works, like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land, draw on a wide range of cultural reference to depict a modern world that is in ruins yet somehow beautiful

and deeply meaningful. Eliot uses techniques like pastiche and juxtaposition to make his points without having to argue them explicitly. As Ezra Pound once famously said, Eliot truly did “modernize

himself.” In addition to showcasing a variety of poetic innovations, Eliot’s early poetry also develops a series of characters who fit the type of the modern man as described by Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and

others of Eliot’s contemporaries. The title character of “Prufrock” is a perfect example: solitary, neurasthenic, overly intellectual, and utterly incapable of expressing himself to the outside world.

As Eliot grew older, and particularly after he converted to Christianity, his poetry changed. The later poems emphasize depth of analysis over breadth of allusion; they simultaneously become more

hopeful in tone: Thus, a work such as Four Quartets explores more philosophical territory and offers propositions instead of nihilism. The experiences of living in England during World War II inform the

Quartets, which address issues of time, experience, mortality, and art. Rather than lamenting the ruin of modern culture and seeking redemption in the cultural past, as The Waste Land does, the

quartets offer ways around human limits through art and spirituality. The pastiche of the earlier works is replaced by philosophy and logic, and the formal experiments of his early years are put aside in

favor of a new language consciousness, which emphasizes the sounds and other physical properties of words to create musical, dramatic, and other subtle effects.

However, while Eliot’s poetry underwent significance transformations over the course of his career, his poems also bear many unifying aspects: all of Eliot’s poetry is marked by a conscious desire to

bring together the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the emotional in a way that both honors the past and acknowledges the present. Eliot is always conscious of his own efforts, and he frequently

comments on his poetic endeavors in the poems themselves. This humility, which often comes across as melancholy, makes Eliot’s some of the most personal, as well as the most intellectually

satisfying, poetry in the English language.