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The Waste Land | Introduction

Because of his wide-ranging contributions to poetry, criticism, prose, and drama, some critics consider Thomas Sterns Eliot one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The Waste Land can arguably be cited as his most influential work. When Eliot published this complex poem in 1922—first in his own literary magazine Criterion, then a month later in wider circulation in the Dial— it set off a critical firestorm in the literary world. The work is commonly regarded as one of the seminal works of modernist literature. Indeed, when many critics saw the poem for the first time, it seemed too modern. In the place of a traditional work, with unified themes and a coherent structure, Eliot produced a poem that seemed to incorporate many unrelated, little-known references to history, religion, mythology, and other disciplines. He even wrote parts of the poem in foreign languages, such as Hindi. In fact the poem was so complex that Eliot felt the need to include extensive notes identifying the sources to which he was alluding, a highly unusual move for a poet, and a move that caused some critics to assert that Eliot was trying to be deliberately obscure or was playing a joke on them.

Yet, while the poem is obscure, critics have identified several sources that inspired its creation and which have helped determine its meaning. Many see the poem as a reflection of Eliot’s disillusionment with the moral decay of post–World War I Europe. In the work, this sense of disillusionment manifests itself symbolically through a type of Holy Grail legend. Eliot cited two books from which he drew to create the poem’s symbolism: Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance (1920) and Sir James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890). The 1922 version of The Waste Land was also significantly influenced by Eliot’s first wife Vivien and by his friend Ezra Pound, who helped Eliot edit the original 800-line draft down to the published 433 lines. While The Waste Land is widely available today, perhaps one of the most valuable editions for students is the Norton Critical Edition, which was published by W. W. Norton in 2000. In addition to the poem, this edition also includes annotated notes from editors and from Eliot, a publication history, a chronology, a selected bibliography, and a collection of reprinted reviews from the 1920s to the end of the twentieth century.

An attempt to examine, line by line, the specific meaning of every reference and allusion in The Waste Land would certainly go beyond the intended scope of this entry. Instead, it is more helpful to examine the overall meaning of each of the five sections of the poem, highlighting some of the specific references as examples. But first a discussion of the poem’s title The Waste Land is necessary. The title refers to a myth from From Ritual to Romance, in which Weston describes a kingdom where the genitals of the king, known as the Fisher King, have been wounded in some way. This injury, which affects the king’s fertility, also mythically affects the kingdom itself. With its vital, regenerative power gone, the kingdom has dried up and turned into a waste land. In order for the land to be restored, a hero must complete several tasks, or trials. Weston notes that this ancient myth was the basis for various other quest stories from many cultures, including the Christian quest for the Holy Grail. Eliot says he drew heavily on this myth for his poem, and critics have noted that many of the poem’s references refer to this idea.

The Waste Land Summary

I. Burial of the Dead
The first section, as the section title indicates, is about death. The section begins with the words “April is the cruellest month,” which is perhaps one of the most remarked upon and most important references in the poem. Those familiar with Chaucer’s poem The Canterbury Tales will recognize that Eliot is taking Chaucer’s introductory line from the prologue—which is optimistic about the month of April and the regenerative, life-giving season of spring—and turning it on its head. Just as Chaucer’s line sets the tone for The Canterbury Tales, Eliot’s dark words inform the reader that this is going to be a dark poem. Throughout the rest of the first section, as he will do with the other four sections, Eliot shifts among several disconnected thoughts, speeches, and images.

Collectively, the episodic scenes in lines 1 through 18 discuss the natural cycle of death, which is symbolized by the passing of the seasons. The first seven lines employ images of spring, such as “breeding / Lilacs,” and “Dull roots with spring rain.” In line 8, Eliot tells the reader “Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee.” The time has shifted from spring to summer. And while the reference to Starnbergersee—a lake south of Munich, Germany—has been linked to various aspects of Eliot’s past, to Eliot’s readers at the time the poem was published, it would have stuck out for other reasons, given that World War I had fairly recently ended. During the war Germany was one of the main opponents of the Allied forces, which included both the United States and England— Eliot’s two homes. By including German references, which continue in the next several lines and culminate in a German phrase, Eliot is invoking an image of the war. Who are the dead that are being buried in this section? All the soldiers and other casualties who died during World War I.

The German phrase leads into a conversation from a sledding episode in the childhood of a girl named Marie. The season has changed again, to winter. Marie notes, “In the mountains, there you feel free,” implying that when she is not in the mountains, on a sledding adventure, she does not feel free. In other words, Marie feels trapped, just as humanity feels trapped in its own waste land. In line 19 Eliot starts to give some visual cues about the waste land of modern society. “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?” the poet asks. In response, Eliot refers to a biblical passage, addressing the reader as “Son of man.” The poet tells the reader that he or she “cannot say, or guess” what the roots of this waste land are, because the reader knows only “A heap of broken images” where “the dead tree gives no shelter.” These and other images depict a barren, dead land. But the poet says in line 27, “I will show you something different.” In lines 31 to 34 Eliot reproduces a song sung by a sailor in the beginning of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Eliot is inviting the reader to come on a journey, a tour of this modern waste land. The song—which asks why somebody is postponing a journey, when there is fresh wind blowing toward a homeland— indicates Eliot’s desire to regenerate this barren land. In fact his use of the word “Hyacinths,” which are symbolic of resurrection, underscores this idea.

In line 43 Eliot introduces the character of Madame Sosostris, a gifted mystic with a “wicked pack of cards,” or tarot cards. She pulls the card of “the drowned Phoenician Sailor,” another image of death and also a direct reference to a fertility god who, according to Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, was drowned at the end of summer. Again these images collectively illustrate the natural cycle of death. Following the Madame Sosostris passage, Eliot, beginning in line 60, introduces the “Unreal City, / Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many.” These lines suggest a similar description of the modern city by Baudelaire. The image of brown fog is dismal, as is the next line, which notes “I had not thought death had undone so many.” Eliot here is describing a waking death. These people are alive in the physical sense, but dead in all others. It is a sad city, where “each man fixed his eyes before his feet.”

In line 68 Eliot notes there is “a dead sound on the final stroke of nine,” which refers to the start of the typical work day. In other words these people trudge along in a sort of living death, going to work, which has become an end in itself. Within this procession, however, the poet sees someone he knows, “Stetson,” who was with the poet “in the ships at Mylae!” Mylae is a reference to an ancient battle from the First Punic War, which by extension evokes an image of death on the civilization scale. The poet asks his friend if the “corpse you planted last year in your garden” has “begun to sprout?” Here again Eliot is invoking the idea of resurrection, and of the natural cycle of death and life. First, when dead people decompose, their organic matter fertilizes the ground, which loops back to the first line of the section, in which April, “the cruellest month,” is breeding flowers, which presumably are feeding off this decomposed flesh. But in a more specific way, this passage refers to Frazer’s book, which details a primitive ritual whereby in April these primitive civilizations would plant a male corpse, or just the man’s genitals, in order to ensure a bountiful harvest. This harvest, which can be interpreted symbolically as the rebirth of civilization, is potentially threatened by “the Dog,” which has been interpreted as the lack of meaning in life.

Critics interpret the dog this way largely because of the final lines of the section, a quote from Baudelaire, which indict the reader for his or her part in creating the... » Complete The Waste Land Summary