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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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