The Wasteland by T.S Eliot: The Burial of The Dead

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Submitted by : Kanwal Yasmeen

Submitted to : Miss Aneela Azher

Subject : Modren poetry

Roll no : 10247

The Wasteland by T.s Eliot ( Indepth Analysis)


Section no : 1

The Burial of the Dead

Stanza no : 1
Paraphrase
The most cruel month of April, breeding, is Lilacs from the land of the dead, combining
memory and longing, and stirring up. dull roots with rain in spring.

Explanation
An unknown speaker claims that "April is the cruellest month," even though we might
usually think of spring as a time of love. But if you're lonely, seeing flowers blooming and people kissing
might make you even more depressed about your "Memory and desire". The spring rain might normally
bring new life, but for you it only stirs "Dull roots".

Also, you might want to note how Eliot really works the poetic technique of enjambment to carry each
phrase over the line breaks with extra participles or -ing words (i.e., breeding, mixing, and stirring). 

These lines are also written in almost-perfect iambic meter, which is really supposed to give you a sense
of stability in a poem. But Eliot's enjambment keeps making it unstable by making every thought seem
unfinished. 

So right off the bat, he suggests that traditional forms of art might not bring the sense of closure and
certainty they once did.
Stanza no : 2
Paraphrase
The speaker says that instead of spring being the best time of year, We were kept warm by
winter covering, earth in the snow of oblivion, feeding. A little life with tubers dried up.

Explanation These lines show that when it comes to feeling bad, it's better to be forgetful and almost
numb in your emotions, surviving on the little bits of joy in your life as if they were "dried tubers" from
you potato cellar.

Also, the iambs of the first three lines have started to break down, although you're still getting those
enjambed participle -ing words at the end of each line. Eliot is thematically showing you here that an
unfinished thought has a way of infecting our sense of certainty and nibbling away at it like a termite.

This section is overflowing with alliteration and consonance, in fact. Notice the intensity of
/I/m/d/f/k/s/r/t/p/, and ng/ sounds.

Stanza no : 3
Paraphrase
We were shocked by summer, coming across the starnbergersee, there was a rain shower,
we stopped at the colonnade, and he moved on into the Hofgarten in the sunshine. He drank coffee and
spoke for an hour.

Explanation
These lines talk about how "summer surprised us," meaning that the poem's speaker has a
crowd they hung out with in the past, but we're not clear who "us" is. At this point, you suddenly realize
that you're probably dealing with a dramatic monologue, meaning that the poem is being spoken by a
specific character. This isn't Eliot, or some third person narrator yakking away.

Coming over the Starnbergersee" makes the location of the memory more specific,
because Starnbergersee is the name of a lake that's just a couple miles south of Munich, Germany.

The speaker then talks about how the group walked past a bunch of fancy columns and ended up in a
city park in Munich known as the Hofgarten.They drank coffee and talked for an hour. 

Then you have strange line in German that says "I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, a true
German” This phrase further emphasizes the separation that the author, and the reader, then, feels.

Stanza no : 4
Paraphrase
And when we were teenagers, when we stayed with the Arch –duke, he took me out on
a sled, with my cousin , and I was afraid , and he said keep on fast Marie. And down there we went.
There you feel free in the mountains. Most of the night, I read, and I go south in winter.

Explanation
These lines continue on with the speaker's memories of childhood. the speaker is
the cousin of an archduke, which means that he or she probably came from a pretty ritzy background.
And they went on swanky vacays to boot.

It turns out Eliot's actually alluding to a real, historical figure named Marie Louise Elizabeth Mendel, a
Bavarian woman who was born into a family with royal roots, and became Countess Larisch when she
was nineteen. She was also the cousin of Archduke Rudolph, the Crown Prince of Austria. 

The two experience counted here could also well be seen as the dualistic nature of the world war. From
before the war-Marie and her cousin go sledding, that sense of excitement and adventure, in the
mountrains, there you feel free; which could stand for the post war world boring and sterile and
emptied of all nuance, unlike the pre-war world.

She ends on a weird note, though, telling you that she likes to read during the night and travels south in
the winter, which makes her sound like a bookwormy goose. This could mean that now that she's old,
she gets her enjoyment from books and doesn't go to the snowy mountains anymore, choosing instead
to "go south in winter"

Stanza no 5
Paraphrase
It's not Marie who's talking anymore, but someone else. These lines throw you three
verses from the Bible, and they basically talk about how your soul is like soil without water, which is,
yes, as awful as it sounds.

Explanation
Here is another of Eliot’s allusions son of man you cannot say or guess’ which is directly lifted from the
call of Ezekiel, in the book of Ezekiel. This is how God addresses Ezekiel, and the use of it in the poem
elevates Eliot to a god-like position, and reduces the reader to nothing more than a follower; this could
also have been put in as a response to the vast advancements of the time, where science made great
leaps of technology, however the spiritual and cultural sectors of the world lay forgotten, according to
Eliot

‘A heap of broken images’ shows the fragmented nature of the world, and the snapshots of what the
world has become further serves to pinpoint the emptiness of a world without culture, a world without
guidance or spiritual belief. 

These are the lines when that whole waste land concept really gets some juice. Eliot's
speaker describes a desert, and it's just about as awful as deserts can get—no water, dead trees, red
rock. Wherever we are, we're surrounded by stony rubbish, whether real or figurative, and our speaker
is Not Happy.

Stanza no 6
Paraphrase
And I’am going to show you something different from either of the your morning
shadow treading behind you, or your evening shadow rising to meet you; in a handful of
dust ,I’ll show you fear.
Explanation
Eliot's use of parallelism in these lines and suggests a certain mirroring effect in the two shadows, which
gives you a confused sense of traveling into two opposite directions at once. 

The references to shadows seems to imply that there is something larger and far more greater than the
reader skulking along beside the poem, lending it an air of menace and the narrator an air of
omnipotence, of being everywhere at once.

Stanza no 7

Paraphrase

These lines are written in German and taken from Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and
Isolde, which tells the story of two doomed lovers. They're spoken by a sailor who thinks sadly about a
girl he's left behind in his travels, kind of like this guy.

Explanation

The German in the middle is from Tristan and Isolde, and it concerns the nature of love –
love, like life, is something given by God, and humankind should appreciate it because it so very easily
disappears. In Tristan and Isolde, the main idea behind the opera is that while death conquers all and
unites grieving lovers, love itself only causes problems in the first place, and therefore it is death that
should be celebrated, and not love. The use of it in Eliot’s poem adds to the idea of a welcomed death,
of death needing to appear.

Stanza no 8

Paraphrase

A year ago, you first gave me hyacinths, the hyacinths girl they called me, yet when we
returned from the hyacinth garden late. your arms are full and your hair is wet, so I couldn’t do that
Talk, and my eyes have failed neither have I been nor been. living or dead, and there was nothing I knew

Explanation

It seems like a woman is speaking again in these lines, and she remembers a time when
she was young and someone gave her nice hyacinth flowers, all romantic-like. Eliot uses the poetic
technique of apostrophe here, meaning that the woman is addressing another person who doesn't seem
to be present in the poem at this point. Or, more creepily, she might actually be talking to herself, which
would suggest a deep sense of longing or mourning for something that's gone. And a little break with
sanity, too. Somewhere in the woman's distant memory, something went really really wrong. She
remembers how suddenly, without warning, her love went south, so to speak. She felt she "was
neither / Living nor dead, and [she] knew nothing". It's like her soul just up and died. 

These lines finish with another line in German from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde opera, which translates
as "Waste and empty is the sea." However, to continue with the same theme in the poem, the evidence
of love will be lost to death, and there will be nothing more existing.

Stanza no 9

Paraphrase The speaker shifts again and tells you about a fortune-teller named Madame Sosostris,
who "Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe" even though she gets a "bad cold" like everyone
else. 

Explanation
In this stanza “The fortune-telling of “The Burial of the Dead” will illustrate the general method very
satisfactorily. On the surface of the poem the poet reproduces the patter of the charlatan, Madame
Sosostris, and there is the surface irony: here sosostris is a literary allusion the contrast between the
original use of the Tarot cards and the use made by Madame Sosostris. But each of the details assumes a
new meaning in the general context of the poem. There is then, in addition to the surface irony,
something of a Sophoclean irony too, and the “fortune-telling,” which is taken ironically by a twentieth-
century audience, becomes true as the poem develops–true in a sense in which Madame Sosostris
herself does not think it true. The surface irony is thus reversed and becomes an irony on a deeper level.
The items of her speech have only one reference in terms of the context of her speech: the “man with
three staves,” the “one-eyed merchant,” the “crowds of people, walking round in a ring,” etc. But
transferred to other contexts they become loaded with special meanings. To sum up, all the central
symbols of the poem head up here; but here, in the only section in which they are explicitly bound
together, the binding is slight and accidental. The deeper lines of association only emerge in terms of
the total context as the poem develops–and this is, of course, exactly the effect which the poet intends.”

The Phoenician sailor could be a reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest; in this particular stanza,
several images intermesh between water and rock, starting with the allusion to the tempest (water
being the symbol used by Eliot for rejuvenation and regeneration) and then moving on to the idea of
Belladona, ‘the lady of the rocks’, i.e. the never-changing and desolate landscape of the Waste land
itself. Once more, it moves to water – the ‘man with three staves’ being the representation of the Fisher
King, who was wounded by his own Spear, and is regenerated through water given to him from the Holy
Grail.T.S.

Stanza no 10

Paraphrase

The phrase ‘Unreal City’ references Baudelaire’s The Seven Old Men, from Fleurs du Mal. It
was written at the time when Paris was considered a decadent, overwrought paradise of science,
technology, and innovation, but not very much culture; thus, Paris, in Baudelaire’s writing, takes on a
nightmarish landscape.

Explanation

 Here, Eliot uses it in much the same effect: a nightmarish landscape that is not quote Paris,
and is not quite London, but is meant to stand in for several places at once. In a formal sense, you
should also notice how every now and then, Eliot will throw you a little rhyming couplet, like he does
with "feet" and "Street" or "many" and "many". Again, these sudden bursts of classic, recognizable
form help remind us of the overall sense of cultural fragmentation that Eliot is trying to convey in this
poem.

‘Mylae’ is a symbol of warfare – it was a naval battle between the Romans and Carthage, and Eliot uses
it here as a stand-in for the First World War, to show that humanity has never changed, that war will
never change, and that death itself will never change.

‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men’ is a paraphrasing of a quote from John Webster’s The
White Devil, a play about the Vittoria Accoramboni murder. In the play, a character named Marcello is
murdered, and his mother tearfully implores Flamineo to keep ‘the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men /
for with his nails he’ll dig them up again’. If he is dug up again, then his spirit will never find rest, and he
will never be reborn – here, Eliot, capitalizing on the quote, changes it so that the attempt to disturb
rebirth is seen as a good thing. After all, Eliot is implying, who would want to be reborn in a world
without culture.

Section no : 2

A Game of Chess
Stanza no : 1

Paraphrase

These lines show us Like a burnished throne, the chair she sat in, it was shining on the marble
where the glass was held up by criteria resulting from fruity vines from which a cupidon of gold peeped
out doubled the seven branched candelabra frames reflecting light as light on the table, to meet in the
glitter of her jewels rose.

Explanation

The first stanza opens with a description of a woman sitting inside a really expensive room. The
"burnished throne" it is a reference to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, which heightens the
queen-like sense of the room the speaker is describing to you. 

Eliot chooses to open this section of the poem with unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse,
which is a pretty classic, common meter in English poetry—recognizable enough to seem stable and easy
to follow. It's only later in "A Game of Chess" that this fragile sense of order starts to break down. Which
makes sense, because society's undergoing a bit of cultural and spiritual breakdown in the modern
world. Or at least that's Eliot's take. The phrase The chair she sat in,like a burnished throne, shows
simile here.
Stanza no : 2

Paraphrase

These lines continue the description of the lavish room, telling us that stinky perfumes are
oozing from vials and up to the ceiling (laquearia refers to a fancy, paneled ceiling. 

Explanation

In these lines we're starting to notice that everything sounds kind of fake and tawdry, too: "In
vials of ivory and coloured glass / Unstoppered, lurked their strange synthetic perfumes, /
Unguent, powdered, or liquid".
The word "synthetic" that especially seems to point to the unnaturalness of modern chemicals
and even modern beauty.When the speaker suggests that the smell of these things "drowned
the sense of odours" it could mean that modern products are just too much sometimes, too
overwhelming. You know what we're talking about: haven't you ever been stuck in an elevator
with a dude who's wearing too much cologne.

Stanza no : 3

Paraphrase

In these lines speaker says Giant sea wood fed by copper green and orange brandy,
surrounded by a colored block, the carved dolphin swam in that sad light.

Explanation

The speaker follows the smoke from the candles to the room's ceiling, and find that it is
made of "sea-wood fed with copper", which makes it burn green and orange. As weird as it sounds, in
the wayback days, a lot of ceilings were copper, so the image isn't all that strange. The speaker finds
that in the room's "sad light a carvèd dolphin swam". This line really shows how the room has taken the
image of something natural and vibrant—a dolphin—and turned it into a dead carving. It's like the
room wants to remind everyone of nature,but it can only do this in a superficial way,   unlike the modern
world.

Stanza no : 4

Paraphrase

These lines describe some sort of painting or tapestry that's on the wall of the lavish room,
which depicts the transformation of the mythical heroine Philomela into a nightingale, which takes place
in a "sylvan scene." That phrase is an allusion to John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Explanation

The myth of Philomela, which is featured in the poetic Metamorphoses written by the Roman


named Ovid around the time of Christ, tells the story of Philomela, who was raped by her sister's
husband, King Tereus. He then cut out her tongue so she wouldn't tell on him.  As the story goes,
Philomela managed to tell her sister the truth by weaving her story into a tapestry. Then the two of
them iced Tereus' son and fed the boy to Tereus without the king knowing. After Tereus found out,
Philomela escaped by transforming into a nightingale, which is a handy trick when you're in a bind. As
these lines suggest, we can still hear Philomela's voice in the songs of nightingales, but because we don't
study classical stories anymore, this song just sounds like "'Jug Jug' to dirty ears". the phrase jug jug
shows the device onomatopoeia here.

Stanza no : 5

Paraphrase

When the poem speaks about "other withered stumps of time" it's probably talking about
the withered stump that was left after Tereus cut out Philomela's tongue. Much like Philomela, modern
people don't know how to truly express themselves in beautiful ways, so we're all dumbly silent in our
own way. Or you might read it saying that these tapestries are like fragments, or "withered stumps"
from the past that are "told upon the walls." 

Explanation

  Eliot uses personification in these lines to describe how from all around the tapestry on
the wall, other objects and carvings "Lea[n] out," meaning that other stories and artifacts from our past
are just dying to be heard. Too bad we don't have the classic education to hear or understand them. 

The scene concludes with an image of the woman of the room brushing her hair into "fiery points,"
which seem to have something to say. They "glowed into words" after all. But then they're still, so
whatever story they had to tell, we're not going to hear it, because someone's coming on the stairs.

Stanza no : 6

Paraphrase

Reference to the First World War again – the trenches were notorious for rats, and the use
of this imagery further lends the poem a sense of decay and rot.

Explanation

In these lines the Further fragmentation of the poem, to the point where even the grammar
seems to be suffering; ‘Shakespherian Rag’ was a renaming of the ‘Mysterious Rag’, and it is furthermore
emphasising the death of culture for popular, high society dances and popular culture in general.
However, it is interesting to note that he mentions Shakespeare again – once more, the reader thinks of
the Tempest, a drama set on a little island, beset by ferocious storms. we can tell that rats' alley is
probably a very unpleasant place, and it continues the rat motif  that symbolize modern decay
throughout this poem. This poem constantly brings up zombie-like images of the undead as
a metaphor for modern life. For Eliot, our society has gotten so spiritually numb that we can't even
really say if we're alive or dead anymore. Our eyes are too glazed and pearly from watching all those
episodes of Love in the Wild.

Stanza no : 7
Paraphrase
These lines speak about how people wish to kill time in their lives, staying up all night and
playing a game of chess. In this sense, maybe Eliot means that without spirituality, modern life is just a
long game we play with ourselves, always competing, setting goals, and strategizing simply for the sake
of "playing the game." 

Explanation

The lack of purpose, lack of guidance, can be considered to be one of the causes of
madness, and the further descent into fragmentation in the poem. There is a loose sense of time in this
particular stanza – from ‘the hot water at ten./ And if it rains, a closed car at four. / And we shall play a
game of chess, / Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door’. It lends the poem a sense
of suspended animation, as it did in the beginning, however here, the guideless manner of the people
seems to be loosely defined by very small happenings – their days are structured through moments,
rather than planned out. Formally speaking, this is also the last little bit of ordered rhyme "four" and
"door" that you get before the structure of the poem totally collapses into the conversation at a pub.
This could represent a last gasp of sorts of classic culture before it totally gives way to filthy barroom
shenanigans. Or something.

Stanza no : 8

Paraphrase These lines (and the rest of "A Game of Chess") focus on one woman telling a story of a
conversation she had to an audience of acquaintances at a bar.

Explanation

‘Lil’ could reference Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who was thrown out of Eden for being too
dominan. However, in this stanza, it could also be considered that Lil is merely a friend of the narrator’s
– a woman who was unfaithful to her husband; here again is referenced the cloying and ultimately
useless nature of love (‘And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said’). This seems to be built
upon the idea of sex as the ultimate expression of manliness, a theme that Eliot enjoyed exploring in his
works. The fact that the woman hints that there are ‘others who will’ implies that she herself is sleeping
with her friend’s husband, however we cannot be certain of this.

Stanza no : 9

Paraphrase

Lil says that she "can't help it," meaning that she can't help looking so old. She's been really
messed up by the pills she took "to bring it off". The phrase "bring it off" in this case means aborting a
baby. Basically, any pill from the 1920's that could make you abort your baby was going to have a pretty
strong chemical reaction in your body. 

Explanation

This last part of the stanza seems to show the minutiae of the upperclass in shoddy lighting
– with a hard emphasis on the nature of womanhood, and on the trials of womanhood. Lil is ‘only thirty
one’ but looks much older; she took pills to ‘bring it off’, which we later understand is to induce
abortions, and throughout the poem, the other woman attempts to give her advice, however the irony is
that the other woman is, as well, miserable, and wrapped up in her own misery to the point where her
advice seems to be a little skewed. In this scene, Eliot is really giving us a snapshot of how crappy things
have gotten in English society. This is the type of conversation he might have overheard while living in
England, and it reflects the theme of infertility that comes up over and over again in this poem. 

Stanza no : 10

Paraphrase

The phrase ‘hurry up please its time’ giving a sense of urgency to the poem that is at odds
with the lackadaisical way that the woman is recounting her stories – it seems to be building up to an
almost apocalyptic event, a dark tragedy, that she is completely unaware of. The phrasing of "good
night, sweet ladies" seems especially inappropriate, considering the type of conversation 

Explanation

In these lines, the subject of the women's conversation completely changes to normal
everyday stuff, like visiting someone's house and having a really nice ham or "hot gammon". But that
story will have to be finished another day, because the barkeep is practically yelling now. The scene ends
with everyone saying goodnight to one another as though they're all very pleasant and polite. And we
finally get to learn who these folks in the bar are: Bill, Lou, and May. The last line references Ophelia,
the drowned lover of Hamlet, who famously thought ‘a woman’s love is brief’. Therefore, we know for
sure that this particular stanza of the poem is referencing sex – the ultimate pleasure for a man, and a
duty of the woman’s.

Section no : 3

The Fire Sermon


Stanza no : 1

Paraphrase

In these lines, Eliot vividly paints a picture of someone sitting on the bank of the famous
Thames River in London. 

Explanation

The overall tone, as you might expect, continues to be pretty dreary. But there's a lot of wetness in
this scene, compared to the dryness and drought-like quality of earlier sections with all those shadows
and red rock. The most significant part of these lines comes with the phrase, "The wind / Crosses the
brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed". The nymphs he's talking about are probably
the Naiads, or nymphs of the river, according to Greek mythology. This line tells us that the magic is now
gone from what used to be a very magical place, a place that inspired poets to write about love and
beauty. Here, the water once more represents a loss of life – although there is the sign of human living,
there are no humans around.

Stanza no : 2

Paraphrase
The line "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song" is a line from a poem
called "Prothalamion" by Edmund Spenser, and it references a marriage song. 

Explanation

Eliot is suggesting to us, though, that Spenser's Thames was very different than the one of Eliot's
time, which is polluted with "empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes,
cigarette ends" Eliot says, "the river bears no [litter]", but that's actually a sarcastic remark, meaning
that all the litter is there now, but wasn't in Spenser's time. That Eliot's a confusing guy. But he's not so
confusing that he's writing a poem called "The Waste Land" about a river that's...clean. The people
who've left this stuff behind aren't just the riff-raff, either, but are probably the "heirs of city directors",
meaning that even people of privilege have turned to slobs in the 20th century.  And along with the litter
replacing the scenic riverbank, the nymphs have been replaced by these city directors, who sound way
less awesome, seeing as how they make the river all polluted and gross.  

Stanza no : 3

Paraphrase

Eliot's speaker claims, "By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…" which might hint at
the weeping that the Hebrews did when they stopped by the rivers of Babylon and remembered Zion,
the homeland they were exiled from.

Explanation

 In these lines could also just be the speaker of this poem being really depressed about the
world. The use of ellipsis (…) at the end of this line also contributes to the overall lack of closure that you
get throughout. The speaker is trailing off, unsure of where he's going. After this, you get the line from
the Spenser poem repeated twice, followed by a sudden mention of "But at my back in a cold blast I
hear / The rattle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear . There's something super creepy about
these lines, as though some violent person is standing right behind the speaker, ready to do something
awful, and enjoy it.

Stanza no : 4

Paraphrase

A disgusting, slimy rat crawls into the Thames while the speaker is fishing and thinking about
"the king my brother's wreck". The "White bodies naked on the low damp ground" (193) could refer to
the people killed by Prospero's storm, or actual dead bodies lying along the bank of the Thames. 

Explanation

There is no reason given, ultimately, for the wreckage of the Waste Land; however, following the idea of
the Fisher King, we can assume this – that as the narrator suffers, so too does the world. While the rat
provides the pitch-perfect image for the decay that's going on in society in Eliot's time,
we're more interested in this wreck. The world, with the loss of culture, is now a barren continent,
and with the onset of wars, has only served to become even more ruined and destroyed.

‘Sweeney and Mrs Porter in the spring’ – the legend of Diana, the hunting goddess, and Actaeon.
Actaeon spied on Diana in the bath, and Diana cursed him with becoming a stag, who was torn to pieces
by his own hounds. Here, Eliot tries again to show the ruin that love and lust can bring to the lofty spirit.

Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole ‘– ‘and O those children’s voices singing in the dome’,
which is French and from Verlaine’s Parsifal, about the noble virgin knight Percival, who can drink from
the grail due to his purity. It stands in this poem as a criticism of then-contemporary values; of the
down-grading of lust.

Stanza no : 5

Paraphrase

These lines go back to the story of  Philomela, which Eliot alluded to way back in lines 99-
103.That brings us back to the idea of sex as something horrible and violent, as you can see with the
repetition of "so rudely forced. And Philomela's nightingale song continues as well, with a few new
notes, too—"twit." To be fair, the "twit" sounds might also refer to the moronic twits who populate the
modern world.

Explanation

In these lines, it's clear that the modern world, with its crappy, polluted rivers, is no place for a beautiful
song. So instead of the high notes, we get ugly the ugly onomatopoeias of "twit" and "jug." Formally,
this sudden fragment also has the effect of refrain, because it's a phrase that Eliot returns to so he can
remind us of the fact that beauty might still be around us, but we're unable to see or hear it (i.e., just as
we don't realize that the nightingale's song is actually Philomela trying to be heard).

Stanza on : 6

Paraphrase

We return to the idea of the phony, superficial "Unreal city," which is covered by a filthy
"brown fog of a winter noon"

Explanation

In these We hear a story about some merchant from Smyrna  who is "Unshaven" and keeps a
bunch of dried fruit in his pockets.This man asks the speaker in terrible "demotic French" if the speaker
would like to join him for lunch at the Cannon Street Hotel / Followed by a weekend at the
Metropole". These two places were notorious in Eliot's time for being secret meeting places where men
would hook up with one another sexually. In all likelihood, the puritan Eliot found this kind of sex
request disgusting, and is using it here as yet one more sign of how awful Western culture has gotten.
There's also a strong hint of racism in the representation of this guy from Turkey. and thus once more,
Eliot paints the cheapest possible sight of love.

Stanza no : 7

Paraphrase

These lines set up the coming scene with the blind prophet Tiresias by talking about the
hour when people look up from their desks and are just "throbbing" to get home from work . 

Explanation

In this instance, you really get a sense of what beautiful poetry Eliot can write. He
uses cadence here to help this image flow off the page, rather than relying on more obvious tactics
like alliteration or meter.

Stanza no :8

Paraphrase

In these lines speaker says Though blind, throbbing between two lives I Tiresias. You can see a
old man with wrinkled female breasts at the violet hour the striving hour of the evening home talking
the sailor from the sea.

Explanation

In these lines speaker tells us Tiresias is from Greek Mythology, and he was turned into a
woman as punishment by Hera for separating two copulating snakes. In the poem, it just serves, again,
as a symbol of the cheapness of love and affection. So Eliot uses Tiresias in this poem as a sort of
removed observer who can see visions from all over the world and see how awful the world really is.
He's a universal kind of guy. In fact, it's totally possible that the speaker of this entire poem is actually
Tiresias, but that's just one going theory. Tiresias is "throbbing between two lives" because Eliot
portrays him in this poem as a hermaphrodite, a person who is male and female at the same time. This
is what makes him an "Old man with wrinkled female breasts".Of course that "throbbing" at the "violet
hour" is allying Tiresias with these average Joes at their office desks (it's also the hour
that Sappho writes about in her poem "Hesperus, you bring back again," to which Eliot alludes here).

Stanza on : 9

Paraphrase

The speaker says the teatime typist house clears her breakfast lights her burner and in tins
she lays out food. Perilously extending out of the window.

Explanation
Tiresias offers us one of his/her visions, and talks about a young woman being home from
work at teatime and "Lay[ing] out her food in tins"while her laundry dries out the window. Seems like an
everyday image—woman, home, and doing chores. But there's something oddly depressing about it. For
one thing, she's alone. And for another, she's a bit of a slob (she left her breakfast out? and her
underwear is lying around.

Stanza on : 10

Paraphrase

Tiresias makes sure to mention his wrinkly old breasts again before telling us that he
already knows what's about to happen in this young woman's apartment.or because the scene
is painfully predictable

Explanation

Carbuncular is a fancy word for really pimply, which means this guy's probably not all that
much to look at. He doesn't have a very high-paying job, but he's got a "bold stare" and is way more self-
assured than he's got reason to be. This seems to be another pet peeve of Eliot's: people with no real
achievements in life thinking they're totally awesome. For realsies, thank goodness this man did not live
to see the days of reality TV. At this point in the poem, you also find a pretty strong return of rhyming in
Eliot's poem. This might be because Eliot is satirizing the scene as an example of "modern romance,"
and using a traditional sense of rhyme to show how pathetic and gross the scene actually is. It certainly
isn't rhyme-worthy, that's for sure. The idea here is that the young man carbuncular fancies himself a
classic sexual conqueror (and is as self-assured as a millionaire, even though he's basically a secretary),
but he's just a pimply-faced kid with a pathetic job and a boring girlfriend .

Stanza no:11

Paraphrase

This is a propitious moment now as he guesses, The meal will be over she will be bored and
tired striving to engage her in casses which are also if unwanted unreproved.

Explanation

The ugly young man decides that it's time to make his move on the girl, since she's probably
tired and sluggish after eating her meal. Yeah, super romantic. Moving in,he "Endeavours to engage her
in caresses". The girl doesn't really want to have sex with him, but she basically says "meh" and doesn't
really put up a fight. As you can probably tell, Eliot doesn't think much of modern romance. It's all just a
bunch of poor, uneducated people having their ugly sex

Stanza no : 12

Paraphrase

The guy goes ahead and "assaults at once" , loving the fact that the girl doesn't care one way
or the other, as long as he gets what he wants . 
Explanation

The rhyming of the lines is as consistent as anywhere in the poem, allowing Eliot to really
satirize the fantasy of heroic masculinity that the young man has made for himself. Clearly this guy
thinks he's the cat's meow, and since this typist lady couldn't care less, there's no one around to tell him
any different. So Eliot makes it clear that this guy's actually a schlub with his ironic use of end-rhymes.

Stanza on : 13

Paraphrase

The gist here is that Tiresias wishes that he didn't have to watch this sex scene as it plays out,
but his "gift" of visions isn't something he can turn on and off

Explanation

He talks about how in the days of ancient Thebes, he used to prophesize by the


marketplace's wall and "and walked among the lowest of the dead", which may be an  allusion to
the Odyssey or the Inferno, in both of which Tiresias shows up in the underworld to help a brother out.
And did we mention that Tiresias was also given seven lives by Zeus. At this point, he gives us one last
look at the pimply young man and his roll in the hay with the typist. Now that the young man is finished
with his business, he gives the girl a meaningless "patronizing kiss", and just like the blind prophet,
"gropes his way" down the stairs because the light is out. Tiresias is able to see what's going on
anywhere in the world, and as Eliot shows us, this is mostly what it is: bad sex between bad people.

Stanza no : 14

Paraphrase

She turns and stares into the glass for a moment hardly aware of the departing mistress, her
brain makes the passage of one half formed thought its over now and I’m happy that its finished

Explanation

Now that the pimply dude has left, the girl "turns and looks a moment" in her mirror,
"hardly aware of her departed lover". Calling the guy a "lover" in this scene is Eliot's way of sarcastically
demolishing the idea of modern love, which in his mind is disgusting. The girl is not all that bright, and
her brain only "allows one half-formed thought to pass," which is " 'Well now that's done: and I'm glad
it's over'". Gee, how romantic. Eliot is trying to tell us that this girl has no deep thoughts of any kind, and
she doesn't even have enough intelligence to resist sex that she doesn't want. She's completely passive
in every way, blowing through life like a shopping bag in the wind.

Stanza no : 15

Paraphrase
In these the poet says when a lovely woman stoops to insanity and stupidity paces again
about her place alone, she automatically smooths her hair with her hand, and a record is set on the
gramophone.

Explanation

In these lines Eliot quotes from  Oliver Goldsmith's novel The Vicar of Wakefield by quoting a
song in which the main character sings of being seduced and then ditched. Turns out it's a bit of a
bummer. And that corresponds pretty well to our typist's situation. Now that she's alone again, the
woman just sort of walks around the room without thinking, "smoothes her hair with automatic hand, /
And puts a record on the gramophone" The gramophone (or record player) hints at the idea that
popular culture is part of what makes the girl's life so passive and superficial. 

Stanza no : 16

Paraphrase

The Tempest  strikes again. Finally finished with the young man and woman, Tiresias quotes
another line from Shakespeare's play, which is from a scene of mourning (this whole poem is sort of
about mourning for Eliot—mourning for a better time, now lost)

Explanation

Tiresias goes on to talk about how he often hears music coming out of bars and "the pleasant whining
of a mandolin", which comes with the "clatter and chatter from within" the bar. It seems here that Eliot
is giving us a vision of the better time in history he often hints at. In this world, the fishermen enjoy their
music within a world held together by religious belief, as Eliot goes on to talk about Magnus Martyr,
which is a church with "Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold". The ornament of this church is
a testament to classic beauty, and Eliot suggests here that even uneducated people are perfectly
capable of participating in this kind of world, as long as they are humble and god-fearing, not full of
themselves like the young man carbuncular.

Stanza no : 17

Paraphrase

In these lines, Eliot takes a song from Götterdämmerung, the last opera in Wagner's Ring
Cycle and replaces all the German references with English ones.

Explanation
The song is about women by a river, and in the Wagner version the river is the Rhine, and the
song is all about beauty. In Eliot's version, though, you're back to talking about the Thames, and how
"The river sweats / Oil and tar", which is not so beautiful. Yep, the motif of pollution that Eliot constantly
uses to talk about the moral and spiritual pollution of the modern world has reared its ugly head. And
before you go thinking our speaker has gone totally around the bend with lines 277-278, we should tell
you that the "Weialala leia" part is from Wagner's original. It's also worth noting that the form has
taken a sharp turn for the short—line, that is. We'll see that trend continue for quite a while, so you
might want to think about the effect of that change.
Stanza no :18

Paraphras

These lines talk about a scene from the life of Queen Elizabeth I and her
"lover," Lord Robert, the Earl of Leicester. The scare quotes around "lover" are necessary
because it's well-known among historians that this was a bit of a go-nowhere
relationship for the Queen, just as the young typist's relationship with the pimply guy is
going nowhere. 
Explanation

Eliot got this scene from a famous biography of the queen, The Reign of Elizabeth.
The book, written by a famous British historian named James Anthony Froude, recounts a
moment between Elizabeth and Lord Robert on a barge on the Thames in which they
discuss a potential marriage. 
Stanza no : 19

Paraphrase

In these lines, Eliot parodies part of Dante's Purgatorio, and gives us a few images of the
speaker acting lazy and lying down in a canoe as he floats through ritzy parts of London. 

Explanation

The lines in Dante describe a figure named Pia Tolomei, who describes where she's from and how she
was killed (on the orders of her husband, no less). But in Eliot's poem, the speaker is unidentified,
floating, relaxed in a canoe. Whoever the speaker is, their tour of London sounds pretty awful. The
raised knees on the floor of a narrow canoe, and the word "undid" seems to indicate that this tour was a
sexual one, resulting in unsatisfying encounters with strangers all over modern London.

Stanza no : 20

Paraphrase

My feet are in Moorgate and my heart is in morgate beneath my bottom, after the
phenomenon he screamed he vowed a fresh start.

Explanation

Our speaker—could it be Queen Elizabeth, transported to modern times—continues her jaunt


through London, although now she's at a modern subway station called Moorgate (it's also the name of
a street). Whether she's on a street or in a tube station, her heart is under her feet, indicating that it's
underground, trampled on, or maybe even in Hell. She mentions some "event" (possibly sex) that
happened and made someone else, maybe the Lord Robert, the Earl of Leicester, weep. Whoever this
someone else is, he promises the speaker "a new start," but she just sits there silently. It's possible that
Eliot is referring here to the discussion of marriage that supposedly happened between Elizabeth and
Leicester way back on that barge ride they took together—according to Mr. Foude, of course. Yep,
sounds like this romance is just as doomed as the one between the typist and the young man
carbuncular. For Eliot, the idea of a "new start" was probably a cliché he'd heard enough of, since he
believed that the modern world had very little interest in making a fresh start of anything .

Stanza no 21

Paraphrase

Another speaker talks about hanging out on a rich-people's beach near the mouth of the
Thames (Margate sands), and says that when he's there he can "connect / Nothing with nothing".

Explanation

According to him, people have no ability to "synthesize" ideas anymore, or to think big. All you're
left with is bits and pieces of thought, which are like "The broken fingernails of dirty hands”.This speaker
then takes a moment to say that he comes from humble people and expects nothing. By this point, you
might have noticed that the word "nothing" is repeated a lot in this poem. Which is fitting because that's
exactly what Eliot though modern life had going for it—nothing. In these line, Eliot talks about how the
modern man, however humble, is tempted to an almost insane degree by the modern world, which
throws sex in your face at just about every opportunity.

Stanza no : 22

Paraphrase

Eliot alludes to the Buddha's "Fire Sermon," which describes the burning of passion,


attachment, and suffering.

Explanation

Then he takes a sharp left straight into Christianity, with an allusion to


Augustine's Confessions. In Eliot's words, "The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and
western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident." To put that more
simply: squishing together Eastern beliefs on detachment and Western beliefs on the same was
intentional. It means something to Eliot. And with that, you've got the end of The Fire Sermon. Now that
we've got that part covered, it's time to talk about water 

Section no : 4

Water by death

Paraphrase

Death by Water is the shortest of the five parts in "The Wasteland". Eliot describes in the text,
a man called Phlebas the Phoenician, who has drowned in the sea where his body has been picked apart
and eaten by sea creatures. Eliot expresses in the final stanza, the importance of valuing life, because,
like Phlebas, everyone will die eventually, so you might as well live your life how you want to. 

Explanation

The speaker tells of Phlebas the Phoenician, dead for two weeks now. The waves pick his
bones, and Phlebas undergoes the expected decomposition. The speaker then asks both Gentile and Jew
to consider this man who was once "handsome and tall as you."

These lines can be associated with watching your life flicker through your eyes in the moment before
death. The third stanza is a call to people of any religion to value life and to be mindful of it, because
someday you will die. Phlebas becomes a cautionary figure in that everyone dies and we must live life to
its fullest while we can.

Death by water is visually unique for its shortness and its physical structure. Aurally, it stands out for its
use of sound repetition—and Eliot is certainly not shy in his use of repetition. But here it's subtler than
the repetition of words. In a section that is largely concerned with water, readers are allowed to hear
the water as vividly as they can see it: the "deep sea swell" includes assonance in its repetition of vowel
sounds, but also alliteration in its repetition of "s" in two consecutive words. Similarly, readers can
definitely hear—though the idea is unpleasant—the manner in which the sea picks poor Phlebas's
"bones in whispers". The onomatopoeia in "whisper" makes that sensation vivid. Here, in the image of
decayed youth—of this man "who was once handsome and tall as you"—Eliot reinforces his important
theme of ennui, that bored state so strongly apparent in the personae featured throughout the poem,
the condition that leads to forgetfulness and, ultimately, a wasted condition.

Section no : 5

What the Thunder said


Paraphrase

Section five takes you to a stony landscape with no water. There are two people walking,
and one notices in his peripheral vision that a third person is with them. When he looks over, though,
this other person disappears. In a dramatic moment, thunder cracks over the scene, and its noise seems
to say three words in Sanskrit: Datta, Dayadhvam, and Damyata, which command you to "Give,"
"Sympathize," and "Control." This is followed by a repetition of the word Shantih, which means "the
peace that passeth all understanding." After all that slogging, T.S. maybe gives us a little hope with this
final word. Then again, maybe not.

Explantion

What the thunder said This is the final part of the ‘Wasteland’ and therefore, despite destruction
and desperation, there is the emergence of images of hope and salvation through the arrival of water.
Eliot emphasises the chaos and disorganisation of society through the use of juxtaposing images such as
‘shouting’ and ‘crying’ and ‘prison’ and ‘palace’. Furthermore, the processes of birth, death and rebirth
are alluded to through the use of the phrase ‘We who were living are now dying’. This process is seen to
be an extended process and the cleansing of society is painful. The desperation and restriction of society
due to the lack of water is evident and despite brief images of hope it is apparent that ‘there is no
water’. A change in speaker is apparent as it is questioned ‘Who is the  third that walks beside you? ’
thus emphasising that society is not alone through this process of rebirth. However, destructive and
disturbing images follow, perverting and dehumanising society thus indicating the depths to which
society has succumbed to temptation and the downward spiral in which it has travelled. Finally,
salvation prevails with the emergence of rain as ‘In a flash of lightening. Then a damp gust/Bringing
rain’. Through the voice of thunder God speaks to men, the Gods and Devils in order to express the
traits that need to be followed in order to achieve inner peace. Hence, this is ‘What the Thunder Said’.
Although God speaks using only one word ‘DA’; it is interpreted differently by men, who interpret it as
‘Datta’ (give), the devils, who interpret it as ‘Dayadhvam’ (sympathise), and the Gods who interpret is as
‘Damyata’ (restrain yourself). Eliot concludes the poem with the purification of society and the
destruction of ‘London Bridge’ which epitomised the traits within society which Eliot believed rendered
it a ‘Wasteland’. Moreover the phrase ‘Shantih Shantih Shantih’, which means ‘The peace
which passeth understanding’, indicates the purification of society and the salvation of society due to
the presence of religion. a section filled with hope, this can be juxtaposed with the imagery of death at
the beginning of What the Thunder Said . Phrases such as ‘dead mountain mouth’ and ‘dry sterile
thunder’ reflect the decay and desperation of nature.

``

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