The Wasteland: An Analysis - (Brooks, 1937)

Intro

I - The Burial of the Dead

II - A Game of Chess

III - The Fire Sermon

IV - Death by Water

V - What the Thunder Said

life in death

relies on reader's intellectual knowledge

symbols and ideas link to Eliot's intellect

From Ritual to Romance

land blighted by curse

crops and animals die

plight of the lord

Fisher King powerless

curse can only be removed by knight

physical to spiritual sterility

symbolism

image

Contrast

life devoid of meaning = death

sacrifice = gives life/ awakening

knowledge of god and evil

good vs bad

sexual act = evil

better to do evil than to do nothing

men have lost knowledge of good and evil

not alive

modern wasteland = people do not even exist

attractiveness of death

image

April = month of rebirth

joyful but cruel

theme of reverie

conversation = establish class and character

Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes

men no longer know

world secularized

nightmare vision

Wagner

death

Tristan and Isolde

sung in oprah by a young sailor

song of happy and naiive love

Hyacinth girl

sea is empty

love is happy

love is empty

love cannot exist in a wasteland

Madame Sosostris

vulgar fortune telling

image

Reading fortune of the protagonist

Drowned Phoenician Sailor

death by water

fertility god

Belladonna

The man with three staves

the fisher king

scarecrow

The Hanged Man

Frazer

Baudelaire

death in life

Dantes Inferno

limbo = without hope

without faith life is death

rather do evil than nothing

unreal allusion

london = hell

Mylae

Roman vs. Carthaginains

Punic War

all wars = 1 war

buried god = taunting tone

rebirth

2 kinds of life and 2 kinds of death

Magnificent setting

Vulgar setting London pub setting

Women represents man

Great tradition contrasted with abstraction of modern mind

life and history have no meaning

short game of chess

the only thing that has meaning

Cleopatra

lovers who threw away an empire for love

staled - love does not exist

Philomela

Fisher king withdrew knowledge = curse upon the land

Violation of women and secularism

Raped women = ugly, coarse bird song

Are they alive?

image

Tempest

Shifts something into a new context = powerful meaning

Death = portal to rich and strange

covers up rape

spiritual emptiness

Ophelia

poetry out of suffering

fire = burning lust

Spencer's Prothlamion

image

Water of the Thames = Leman

Fisher King

castle along river

Fish = fertility

Tempest

Protagonist = position of Ferdinand

Sterile death

To His Coy Mistress

sound of horns and motors

Parliament of bees

sounds of horns and hunters

no goddess of chastity

soda water = restoration of Anfortas

pure song of the children

Mr Eugenides

Sosostris bad cold

homosexuality = new cult = sterility

heterosexual realtionships - also sterile

Tiresias

Sappho and Goldsmith

song of the daughters

river nymphs

Music = Wager gottrtdamerung

loss of beauty and gold

cursed

love for loves sake

Love for loves sake

Buddha + St Augustine

east vs west

burning lust punished by fire

relief through surrender

drowned god = reborn

drowned sailor = merchants

Ariel Tempest song

conquest of death and time

binaries

image

the god has now died

we who were living = life has been lost

thunder

speaks and brings rain

Emmaus

god has returned = true or illusion?

spiritual vs unspiritual hooded figures

image

decay of eastern europe

london, athens, jerusalem = unreal cities

unreality to nightmare

womans hair that spoke

fertility

Ecclesiastes

break up of civilisation

cock

chases evil

Full Fathom Five

life gained through death

sanscrit = onomatopaeia

men cannot be self regarding

dayadhvam

surrender

transcend isolation

damyata

control

shall spring return?

despair/ disillusionment

christian terminologies = cliches