Major Themes in “The Waste Land”

Assignment Paper11-E-C-301

Topic- Major Themes in “The Waste Land”

Dabhi Ashvin P

M.A. Part – II

SEM- III

Roll No -06

Year – 2011-12

Department of English

Submitted to Dr. Dilip Barad

Department of English,

Bhavnagar University

Introduction: -

                

          The waste land is one of the most popular poems of the 20^th century. It is written by T.S. Eliot. It has been saluted as Eliot’s masterpiece the supreme power of the poetic art in modern times. It is a poem written in the epic mold. It presents messages for our turbulent times. His use of complex symbols and imagery adds richness and variety to the texture of the poem. It is full with allusions to myth, ritual, religion, history-both past and present. These things make the poem itself a virtual “waste land”. We can see a wide range of socio-cultural, religious and secular experiences common to both an individual life and the collective life of western society. It is a truly remarkable poem that broke new ground in English poetry. There are so many themes in this poem so I would like to discuss them one by one. The themes are like death, rebirth, the seasons, love, lust, water, history etc.

Death: -

              There are four sections and the two, of them “The burial of the Dead” and “Death by Water” refer specifically to this theme ‘Death’. There is complicate matter like death can mean life as in other words by dying a human being can pave the way for new lives. The poet asks his friend: “and the same way Christ, redeemed humanity and there by gave new life. The doubtful part of the poem is between life and death allusions to Dante, and especially in the limbo-like vision of the men flowing across London Bridge and through the modern city.

Life-in-death: -

            

         The theme of the poem is the spiritual and emotional barrenness of the modern world. This theme is like the living death of the modern Waste Landers. Man has lost of vitality of spiritual and vitality of emotional. The life in modern waste land is a life-in-death, a living death. According to Eliot’s philosophy, Human being must act do either evil as good and it is better to do evil than do nothing. Modern man has lost his sense of good and evil, and this keeps him from being alive. In the modern land the people are dead. They merely exist like dead things. They work as machine. They are to be compared to such dead things as a stick, a gutter, a pipe. A life of complete inactivity is listlessness and apathy. That is way winter is welcome to them and April is the crudest of months.

Rebirth: -

             

           We can see some images of the Christ along with the many other religious metaphors, rebirth and resurrection as central themes. The waste land lays fallow and the fisher king is powerless. The new beginning is that they needed something. Here we can take help of water, for one water can bring about that rebirth but it can also destroy. The poet turns the waste land in heaven with the climatic exchange with the skies: “Datta, Dayadhvam, and Damyata.” The poet’s sight is essentially of a world that is neither dying nor living. Hence the strength of grail can restore life and wipe the slate clean Eliot refers frequently to baptisms and to rivers in either spiritual or physical ways.

The seasons: -

              

           The poem opens with an invocation of the month ‘April’, “April is the cruelest month.” The season spring is depicted as cruel is a curious choice on Eliot’s part. As a paradox it informs the rest of the poem to a great degree. The life brings also death. It brings the seasons fluctuate from one state to another. They maintain some sort of stat is not everything changes like history. In the end of Eliot’s world hangs in a perpetual limbo, waiting the dawn of a new season. We can see some aspects of seasons in the life-in-death, a life of complete inactivity, listlessness and apathy. That is why winter is welcome to them and April is the cruelest of months. It reminds them of the stirring of life and, they dislike to be roused from their death-in-life. In this poem Eliot’s “waste land” there seems little hope of renewed life as the early spring rains manage to stir only “a little life” in the “dull roofs” and “dried tubers” that await their renewal each spring. Ester Sunday commemorates Jesus’ resurrection, falls in April. The poet ironically comments here that April is the “cruelest month” and also he comments that April as the stirring of natural life and the spiritual resurrection symbolized in Easter fill humans. Today is not with hope but fear and apprehension. There are some phrases suggested the same things, like “dead land”, “dull roots”, “dried tubers and “forgetful snow”, these four phrases suggest the barrenness of earth and vacuity of life.

Lust: -

           

           There is the most famous episode in the poem” the waste land”. It involves a female typist’s sexual relation with a “carbuncular” man. In this poem Eliot represents the scene as something similar to a rape. This chance sexual encounter carries with it mythological luggage the violated Philomela, the blind man Tiresias who lived for a time as a woman. There is sexuality goes throughout the poem “the waste land”. It takes the center stage as a cause of calamity in the part “the fire sermon”. Here in this poem the poet acts as a lawyer “a moment’s surrender” as a part of existence in “what the thunder said”. There are seven deadly sins in Christianity and lust may be a sin. Sex may be too easy and two flourishing in Eliot’s London. There is action is still is sex that produces life, that restores-sex. In needed is sex that is not sterile. Spiritual sterility is the central motif of all these myths of the past. Besides this there is an emphasis the sanctity of sex. There is decay and spiritual degeneracy whenever the sexual function is perverted. The purpose of the sexual function is procreation and it is sanctified only in marriage. When the sexual act is separated from procreation, there is spiritual degeneracy. In modern society there is perversion of sex and hence its degeneracy. Sex has been separated from love, marriage and procreation. The sex-act has become beastly or mere animal copulation and thus there is decay and spiritual degeneracy. Hence in Eliot’s poetry man is often linked to animals. Sexual sins, perversion of sex, have always led to degeneration and decay. The sexual sins of the king fisher and his soldiers laid waste his kingdom, and ancient Thebes was laid waste because its king was guilty of the sin of incest. Sexual violence has always been there. Philomela was raped and her tongue was severed so that she may not reveal the crime. Reference to Elizabeth and Leicester in the song of the daughters of the Thames shows that sex relationship in the past also has been equally futile and meaningless.

Love: -

              

          There are some references regarding the theme love in this poem. The first part of the poem “the burial of the dead”, in this part we can see some reference to Tristan und Isolde. The second part of the poem is “The Game of chess”. In this part there is a reference to Cleopatra and to the story of Tereus and Philomela suggest that love in the poem “the waste land”. It is often destructive. The characters Tristan and Cleopatra die while Tereus rapes Philomela and even the love for the hyacinth girl leads the poet to see and know “nothing”. The correlative love of life is found in this poem. When the poet writes regarding “hyacinth girl” and being so in love that he did not know if he was alive as dead. He was speechless. He was silence. This is an intense love that I interpret this to be more for the love of life than for love of the girl. The interest in the girl simply allows him to see the beauty of life. Joe even tries to commit suicide at one point, but he still seems to lack a real fear of death. However, Joe is the only one who begins to love his life. Joe finds his love for life through his lover, his freedom, and his that Joe comes to the realization that he has purposely ruined the life of one of his “brothers”. During the time of T.S. Eliot the people too young to come to terms with any real fear of death those people living during this time they did fear and thus their love for life was enriched. “Brothers three” never really found that fear of death they never found that true correlating love of life either.

The Changing nature of gender roles:-

             

           According to Eliot’s life’s course gender roles and sexuality became increasingly flexible. Eliot reflects those changes in his work. In the repressive Victorian era of the nineteenth centaury, women were confines to the domestic sphere, sexuality, was not discussed or publicly explored. People felt both increasingly alienated from one another and empowered to break social mores. English women began agitating in earnest for the right to vote in 1918. Women were allowed to attend school, and women who could afford it continued their education at those universities that began accepting women in the early twentieth century. Eliot simultaneously lauded the end of the Victorian era and expressed concern about the freedoms inherent in the modern age. The poem’s central character, Tiresias is a hermaphrodite. With him Eliot creates a character that embodies wholeness, represented by the two genders coming together in one body.

Conclusion:-

                  

           There are many themes. They are very helpful to understand the whole poem very easily. There are some important aspects remain in themes so themes can be important to study any other texts.