The Waste Land Group

Question:

noos
noos
Student
High School - 9th Grade

I want the analysis of Unreal City in The Waste Land.

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Posted by noos on Saturday May 2, 2009 at 1:58 AM and tagged with analysis, eliot, explanation, metaphors, the waste land, unreal city.

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  1. kc4u Teacher
    College - Senior

    eNotes Editor

    The reality that Eliot describes in The Waste Land, as the very title suggests, is nothing but "a heap of broken images." Like a fearless Modernist, he unveils the unreality of what we consider real as he says, humankind can take in so little of the real. Reality in terms of the post-war history or as Eliot admitted later, of his troubled mind insists him on a breakdown of reality, stressing disconnection, lack of moral or spiritual values or divine faith and so on.

    The city as a topos is a typical Modernist obsession from Eliot to Joyce. The unreal city of London, that is epitomized by the London Bridge passage highlights its dead state and absolute sterility. It appears fantastical because it lacks meaning. Everything seems to go through the motions, without much really happening. There is only sex and no love; there is only motion but no dynamism, there is only dialogue but no real communication. The Stetson-dialogue is a perfect instance of this unreal communication where both words and meaning fail as the city is reduced to the unreality of a blooming corpse.

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    Posted by kc4u on Saturday October 31, 2009 at 11:23 AM