Wasteland Summary
Wasteland by T.S Eliot
The very title of this poem is rich in references. The title evokes associations with vegetation myths which assert that the sterility of the land is due to the impotence of its ruler. And both can be cured by the questing knight asking the right question at a ritual.
Eliot has borrowed much from Jessie L Weston’s book From Ritual to Romance (1920) which speaks about the Grail Legend. The Golden Bough by James Frazor is another work from which Eliot has borrowed. According to Weston, the fisher king was the ruler of the land that was cursed with an evil spell that rendered the king impotent. A questing knight, in search of the Holy Grail, of fabulous virtue and courage would be able to cure the land and the Fisher King of the spell by getting answers to a series of questions.
The epigraph in the poem is quoted from Satyricon of the Roman writer Petronius Arbiter. The most famous of the sibyls, the Cumaean Sibyl helped Aneas pass through hell. Apollo granted Sibyl her wish for immortality but as she did not ask for perpetual youth, she withered into old age. The context in the poem hints at the awful state of lingering between life and death or rather it defines the state of the living dead. Cursed with eternal ageing, she is hanging in a jar and the boys come and ask her what she wants and her reply is that she wants to die. What Eliot wants to point out here is the prospect of death as something to be desired.
The modern wasteland we live in has no hope for a joyous living and the only relief from the monotonous existence is to ask for death. In this wasteland that we live in with no real truth, no real purpose perhaps death is desirable is the one way out of all of this pain and emptiness and barrenness that the wasteland presents. It is the only real hope for peace, for comfort, for silence amid all the multiple voices, all of the emptiness of our relationships.
The poem is divided into five sections, with each section pointing to one of the elements of the earth: the five being earth, air, fire, water and spirit.
The Burial of the Dead is the first section. The title is taken from The Book of Common Prayer, which is a text on the burial service for the dead. The title also references the burial of the fertility gods and the inundation of the river Nile.
The poem begins with the line “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead”. The lines show resemblance to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where April is described as the month of reawakening, of new life and birth, and the season of mating and pilgrimage. But Eliot brings in paradox by saying that Lilacs bloom from the dead. Here we see the hint at the Vegetation myth of burying God's body with seed in it. The seed that grows from it gives the god new life which completes the wheel of life. (Birth, death and resurrection
The voice changes several times in this section. We have Marie, who speaks about her adventure with the Archduke’s cousin. This memory of Marie is filled with happiness and the touch of innocence. The voice changes and we see a reference to Richard Wagner’s Play “Tristan and Isolda” where Tristan is longing to be with his lover. Next, we have the Hyacinth girl who is speaking of her lover who doesn't love her anymore. The voices in the poem seek the happy past and the desire for a better future. The present is totally absent which tells us that the wasteland we live in has no hope to live on or to seize the day.
The perspective changes once again as we reach the last part where we are introduced to Madame Sosostris, a prophetess who no longer has the supernatural abilities she possessed.
She tells the fortune of the reader by drawing her Tarot cards: drowned Phonecian sailor, Belladonna, the man with three staves, a one-eyed merchant and a blank card. She does not find the hanged man but tells us to fear death by water. These lines have a reference to Shakespeare's play The Tempest,“those pearls that were his eyes ', is used to describe the Phonecian sailor which is the symbol of resurrection and rebirth. Once again we see Eliot hinting o
f birth through death.
“I see crowds of people walking round in a ring" an allusion to Dante's Inferno, is a haunting image of layers of hell spiralling down into the centre of the earth. If this wasteland is the culmination of our life, why should we look to things to satisfy us or present any real kind of hope or purpose to our existence? Are we not simply walking around in a ring, spiralling ever downward much like the Sibyl who is ageing and ageing as she lives forever that there is no real end, there is no real purpose or meaning behind it
The last part begins with a reference to Charles Baudelaire's poem The Flowers of Evil. In this collection, he describes Paris, the city he loved so much as an unreal city, the city that is now surreal and ghostly filled with walking dead.
The second section is The Game of Chess and the element of air is evoked here. Chess is the major symbol in this section. Chess is a very cunning and intellectual game that involves a great deal of scheming and strategy. The pieces of the chess board act as an agent of communication for the lovers who have lost intimacy and all they have is a calculating game of chess.
The opening line alludes to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, which introduces a bored woman of leisure sitting before a dressing table. Similarly in the poem, a woman is sitting on a throne studded with jewels, she is cold, independent, and powerful. And is surrounded by a profusion of ornaments, decorations and perfumes.
In the game of chess, the queen is the most powerful piece. She is domineering and has the upper control over the King. Once again the Fisher King myth is evoked - a wounded king means a wounded kingdom, and the power the Queen holds is just a reflection and not her own.
On the mantelpiece in the woman's room, there is carved a scene from Ovid's Metamorphosis. In the story Metamorphosis, Philomela is the sister-in-law of King Tereis and ends up being raped by him. The words 'jug jug' refers to the rape of Philomela. He subsequently cuts off her tongue and her hands to prevent her from telling her story. And the Gods turn Philomela into a nightingale and she is able to tell her tale in the form of the bird's song. For Eliot, one of his main concerns is the inability to tell one's story, the inability to provide meaning and narrative in this chaotic world where we live in the multiplicity of voices.
Then Eliot tells us two stories. In the first story, a woman is speaking to her husband. She is pestering her husband with questions. It is clear that their relationship is crumbling, with no clear communion and no understanding. The second story takes place in a London bar room and the two conversing women represent the poorer sections of society. There is an interrupting voice of the bartender, telling the ladies it is time to close the bar. One of the women is Lil. Lil’s husband is coming back from war, and her friend is advising her to prepare herself for his return and to make herself appealing. Once again we are reminded of the fate of Sibyl - eternal life with eternal ageing. This also highlights the predicament of modern women where one must maintain their physical appeal and their ability to bear children. Like Philomela Lil too is not able to complete her story
The Fire Sermon is the third section and the element evoked is fire. The title refers to a famous sermon preached by Buddha; Buddha's fire sermon which is comparable to Jesus's fire sermon on the mountain. Buddha describes the source of suffering to be desire - the desire for status, power, material wealth and sex. The only way to cope with suffering is to seek a state of desire-less-ness. Ridding yourself of your desires and seeking a sense of neutrality will help to reach a kind of balance where there is no sense of desire. And in the fire sermon, Buddha represents desires as the root of all tragedy and pain in the world.
The section begins with a picture of the deserted river Thames. The area that once thrived on festivals and intimacy between lovers is lying isolated. The nymph or the ladies no longer visit the river. And here the poet is reminded of Spenser’s Prothalamion "Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song". The lovers have departed, and the city directors who engage with ladies have left, leaving no address. All the poet can hear is the chuckle and rattle of bones. There is also a reference to the Bacchanalian, which was a Greek festival or celebration of Bacchus the God of Wine and revelry - a time of feasting, lovers bring united, but the celebrations no longer occur. The riverside is now deserted, with no cause for celebration.
Next, we see three different scenes or preludes to what would ultimately be the most famous passage in the fire sermon and that is of the typist and her lover who returns from the sea.
First encounter here we have the illicit love affair between the sexist Sweeney and Mrs Porter, in a second we have the rape of Philomela and in the third passage, we have a reference to homosexuality which again is a corrupted image of the pure intimate love that we once had.
Next comes the account of the typist. The female typist returns home from work and prepares her room for her lover to return, once again we see that there is no true intimacy between the lovers. The typist is waiting for the sexual union with her lover like a human engine, a mechanical waiting, that lacks true feeling.
The narrator Tiresias/poet, a mythological creature like the Sibyl, is a seer or a prophet. He was cursed and experienced both male and female identities, he had the fortune of understanding human life from both angles that he was male and female at the same time. He was also blinded as part of the curse he incurred. And Tiresias claims to have foreseen the events between the typist and the clerk - there's our indication that he represents all of mankind both male and female. It is a voice that perhaps is the central voice to the wasteland, the only credible voice that can speak to the male and female experiences separately and together in one narrative voice.
The section ends with a lament of the three Thames daughters. The Thames daughters, borrowed from Spenser’s poem, chime in with a nonsense chorus “Weialala Leia / Wallala leialala”. The scene shifts again, to Queen Elizabeth I in an amorous encounter with the Earl of Leicester. The queen seems unmoved by her lover’s declarations, and she thinks only of her “people humble people who expect / Nothing”. The section then comes to an abrupt end with a few lines from St. Augustine’s Confessions and a vague reference to the Buddha’s Fire Sermon.
The penultimate section is called Death by Water. Interestingly we've seen a hint at this section already with the comment toward the end of the burial of the dead with the episode concerning madame Sosostiris and the reading of fortunes from the cars from the tarot. The wheel of fortune we saw in that section was the quintessential image of existence in the universe as we know it. It describes the circular nature of the blood as it diffuses throughout the body, the changing of the seasons, the rotation of the clock, and the turning of the orbits of the planets. The Wheel image is the monotonous unending routine that we seem to all be trapped in. And the second card she read was actually the deck, that is the command to fear death.
Phlebas was a aphonecian sailor, who was skilled in navigation but is now dead. In death, he has forgotten his worldly cares as the creatures of the sea have picked his body apart. The narrator asks his reader to consider Phlebas and recall his or her own mortality.
What the Thunder Said is the final part of The Wasteland. Eliot’s notes to this section read “in the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous and the present decay of eastern Europe''.
This section begins with the account of the Passion of Christ. The poet adds that Christ did not die when he was crucified. He lived in the hearts of the believers but now he is dead because we the modern wastelanders have forgotten him and his teachings.
The next stanza refers to the quest of Percival for the holy grail towards Chapel Perilous. The path the questers reached was an arid and rocky mountain with no water. The repetition “if there were only water amongst the rock” conveys their intense thirst and longing for water. The nightmarish image of the wasteland is highlighted here. A place with no hope, and infertile land with the shadow of impending death.
The journey of two disciples to Emmaus and the vision of the risen Christ beside them is described in the next stanza.
The next important point Eliot makes is the decay of Europe and the aimless journey of the wastelanders. Europe is suffering from madness. People have lost their belief in religion. The church bells are ringing but no one pays heed to them. There is spiritual sterility all around.
When the thunder rumbles in response to the cry of the Wastelanders, we see here that Eliot has drawn on the traditional interpretation of “what the thunder says,” as taken from the Upanishads. According to these fables, the thunder “gives,” “sympathizes,” and “controls” through its “speech”. First, it said DA, Datta to give to others. The thunder spoke a second time and repeated the word DA, meaning Dayadhvam, advising people to be sympathetic and merciful. The third time it spoke, it said DA meaning Damyata meaning self-control.
The final section concludes with the picture of the poet/ Tiresias fishing in a dry and desolate land behind him. In the modern wasteland, London Bridge is falling down, i.e. spiritual values are decaying and degenerating. The poet recalls a line of Dante, “Please remember my pains”. It is only through suffering that regeneration takes place.
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.
If we learn to be charitable, if we learn to be sympathetic and also have self control it would lead to spiritual salvation. Then there would be nothing but “Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi” in the wastelanders life.
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