The Waste Land

The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, was published in 1922 in Criterion, a British magazine, and in the American magazine Dial. It is a revolutionary poem, one that fundamentally changed preconceptions of “what poetry was and how it worked” (p. 1574). Its publication was a “cultural and literary event” (p. 1574) that captured the essence of post World War I life. The destruction and brutality of this ‘war to end all wars’ caused people to look inward and question the potential of humanity to inflict intolerable cruelty and wreak total destruction; poets, authors, and artists reflected this introspective concern in their creative mediums.

In my opinion, the beginning of the poem seems to describe the effects of the different seasons on the barren wasteland that exists after a war has ravaged the trees to stumps and churned the dirt to mud. Perhaps Eliot calls April “the cruelest month” in the opening line of the poem because the regeneration of new life and the growth of “lilacs out of the dead land” (line 2) stands in such stark contrast to the atrocities that had previously occurred there; in some way the encroaching seasons symbolized the waste of the soldiers’ lives (because the seasons keep cycling and the details of the war will eventually be forgotten). To me, these opening lines of the poem reflect the often-fragile relationship between remembering the past while looking to the future; this is particularly evident in Eliot’s lines “mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain” (lines 2-4).

The Waste Land is a puzzle-like poem in that Eliot interlaces copious literary and religious references within each stanza. It is written for an intellectual audience, and it is a complicated poem that critiques modern civilization. The text concisely explains The Waste Land’s structure and states that it “consists of five discontinuous segments, each composed of fragments incorporating multiple voices and characters, literary and historical allusions, vignettes of contemporary life, surrealistic images, myths, and legends” (p. 1575). The inclusion of all of these elements and the somewhat random nature of the poem give it a disjointed feel- the reader never knows quite where Eliot is or where he’s going next.

The pessimism of Eliot’s poem is evident throughout each vignette but is particularly obvious in the poem’s classical epigraph: “For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die.’” (p. 1587) To me, this symbolizes Eliot’s pessimistic attitude about modern civilization and his bleak view of the future, both of which seem to stem from the tragedy of World War I and the stark observation of humanity’s destructive potential. The poem is essentially a critique of the modern condition. While this observation may appear obtuse, it seems that the disjointed structure and essence of the poem may in itself allude to the lack of a unifying element in modern society. The decay of religious influence and tradition in mainstream modern culture, either through neglect or outright rejection, saw the influx of modernism and a pace of change (artistic, technological, and social) that had never been experienced before. Eliot’s poem laments the ‘shock of the new’ and the radical change and rejection of tradition brought on by a post war twentieth century, as well as the innocence of the past that suddenly seemed irrevocably changed. The Waste Land is a requiem for a simpler time.

Eliot, T.S. “The Waste Land.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2007. 1574-98.