Name :- Hitixa Goswami
Class :- M. A. Sam 2
Roll No :-9
Enrollment No :- 2069108420200013
Subject:-The Modernist English literature
Assignment Topic :- critical evaluation " The west land"
Email:- hitixagoswami28@gamil
Submitted to :-S.B.GARDI, Department of English Bhavnagar University
World :2,157
Introduction :- The west land is one of the most popular poem the 20th century. It is written by T. S. Eliot. It has been saluted as Eliot's masterpiece the supreme poewr of the poetic art in modern times. It is poem written in the epic mold. It presents for our turbulent times. he is 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.
About the Author
T. S. Eliot, The greatest modern English poet, was an American by brith and an Englishman by adoption Born at st. Louis, Missouri, U. S. A., he became a naturalized British Subject in 1927. As such he had the blending of the best of the American blood and the English intellect. He combined in himself strange and opposing characteristics. He came to possess a many sided personality.
The west land
T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is by far the most representative poem of the 20th century. It exposes the very soul of the modern generation with all its horrors moral, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy, disillusionment and waste. Eliot wrote the work not merely to understand the war but he wanted to show spiritual degradation through this poem. The west land is divided into five parts like…
Ø The Burial of the Dead
Ø A Game of chess
Ø The fire sermon
Ø Death by water
Ø What the thunder said etc.
" The Waste Land" is a multilayered poem in which several things can be included to study critically, they are given
Theme of the poem
Myth in the poem
Title of the poem
Symbolism in the poem
So, we can see many particular thing in the poem the west land by T. S. Eliot.
Theme of the poem
“The Waste Land” possesses many theme and all these themes have been very well elaborated by T.S Eliot, who conveys these all themes through symbolism and of course with the help of various mythical technique, here in this poem “The Waste land”, T.S Eliot indicates his ideas so it is very much difficult to understand this poem at a first reading but an individual has to read twice or thrice then and then he/she can grasp the central idea of the poem.so we are find the major theme of the poem like.
Love
Lust
Death
Spiritual degradation
Rebirth
1] 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”.
Love is the main theme of this poem. Here in the poem many references can be noticed such as Tristan and Isodle in ‘Burial of the Dead’ and Cleopatra in a ‘Game of Chess’ and to the story of Tereus and Philomela suggests that love in the waste land is often destructive.
2) 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”.
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.
3] Death
Death is the major theme of this poem as two sections of this poem ‘The Burial of the dead’ and ‘death by water’ refers or indicates to this theme. What complicates matters is that death can mean life so in other words one cans say that by dying, a being can pave the way for the new lives. Therefore the death is the central theme of this poem.
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.
4] spiritual degradation
T.S Eliot has expressed what he felt about his land in The Waste Land and how people gradually lost faith in God and spiritual decay is the main theme of the poem as because of it only his land is waste land. In modern society there is a decay and spiritual degeneracy whenever the sexual function is prevented. So Spiritual Degradation can be taken as the main idea of this poem.
5] 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.
6] The season
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.
7] water
The waste land” lacks water and water also promises rebirth at the same time however water can bring about Death. T.S Eliot sees the card of the drowned Phoenician sailor and later titles the fourth section of this poem ‘Death By water’ when the rain finally arrives at the close of the poem it does suggest the cleansing of sin, the washing away of misdeeds and the start of a new future, however with comes thunder and therefore perhaps lightening.
Title of the poem
T.S. Eliot has represented his reaction in the form of this poem entitled “The Waste Land”. It is a symbolic poem composed in the style of poetic esotericism, “Formally” the symbol has been described as a much of ideas and a poetic cryptogram. As such it is the poem of myth and symbols of a series of trains of thoughts whose parts look unconnected with one another.
The title of the poem “The Waste Land” has been inspired by Miss Dessie L. Weston’s book from Ritual to Romance. It refers to a waste land described in one of the Grail Romances. The Land was ruled by the fisher King.
He along with his knights ravished curtail maidens who were guardians of the Grail mysteries. Because of that outrage, he become impotent and fell ill, and his land become waste materialistic world as the waste land, and its ruler as the modern materialistic man. He has profaned the mysteries of life and being, namely the soul and become spiritually impotent and has become waste spiritually. Therefore, it can be said that the title of this poem “The Waste Land” is appropriate and very well chosen by Thomas Stern Eliot.
Myth of the west
What is a Myth?
“A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events”.
An exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing: ‘the book is a scholarly study of the Churchill myth’.
A fictitious or imaginary person or thing: ‘nobody had ever heard of Simon’s mysterious friend – Anna said he was a myth’
There are many myths which can be observed in this poem. T.S Eliot’s The waste land is an important land mark in the history of English poetry and one of the most talked poems of the same Age. Here T.S Eliot described the mythical background in his poem. This mythical technique can be elaborated as given below.
· The Grail Legend
· The King Fisher
· Myth of Tiresias
The grail Legend:
The Myth about this vessel was that at have acquired medicinal and miraculous properties so the result is that it became an object for purity or one kind of devotion and worship. The lance used to pierce the sides of Christ and kept with it. But a time the original Grail was mysteriously disappeared and many of the bold Knights staked their lives and them searching for this vessel. It was generally believed that the grail was sometimes could be found in the sky as the floating saucer but it could only see by those, Knights who were virginal beauty.
Myth of Tiresias:
Here in this poem this myth often comes up to the end of this poem. Tiresias is represented as a bi-sexual in The Waste Land as he was blind but he has the gift of prophecy and immortality. Many stories are same like Tiresias story. According to one story this wise Theban soothsayer in his youth once saw the goddess Athena naked in a pond and goddess struck him blind but his mother was a friend of hers so she bestowed upon him. According to Eliot, Tiresias comes out as the central figure through this poem, what Tiresias sees is the substance of the whole poem. The importance of Tiresias is complex and varied but it is connected with history with the story of King Oedipus, Thebes the classical legend of a waste land.
King Fisher:
According to this myth King Fisher was the prince named King Fisher. IoIt was one of the regions where Grail worship had been anciently vogue, and a temple Known as Chapel Perilous, still stood there, broken and dilapidated, as a mournful memorial of what once was, but later had ceased to be. It was said that the lost Grail was hidden in this chapel. At that time the king himself had become a physical wreck, maimed and impotent, as a result. It was whispered, of a sin committed by his soldiery in outraging the chastity of a group of nuns attached to the Grail chapel..
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.
Work sited
Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965. The Waste Land : and Other Poems. London :Faber and Faber, 1999.
Eliot, T S, and Frank Kermode. The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books, 1998. Print
Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Interpretations: T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
Brooker, Jewel Spears, Bentley, Joseph. Reading The Waste Land: Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.
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