The Waste Land

April is the worse month. Out in the dead land Lilacs are breeding which mixes memory with desire and stirs dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm by covering the Earth in snow. This allowed for the feeding of life with dried tubers. Summer was a big surprise. A rain shower came over Starnbergersee. We stopped and went on when the sun rose. Then we drank coffee and talked for an hour. When we were children we stayed at the archdukes. My cousins took me out on a sled. I was very scared. He said, “Marie, Marie. Hold on tight.” Then down the hill we went, into the mountains. You feel so free. What are the roots that clutch the trees? You can’t say or guess because you only know about broken images where the sun beats. The dead tree doesn’t give you any shelter. There is a shadow under this red rock. I will show you something different from your shadow at morning or your shadow in the evening. I will show you fear. Your arms were full and your hair was wet when we came back from the Hyacinth garden. I couldn’t speak or see. I wasn’t alive and I wasn’t dead. I didn’t know a thing. Madame Sosotris had a bad cold. She is known to be the wisest woman in Europe but, she has a wicked pack of cards. You have to be very careful these days. The Unreal City is under the brown fog. A crowd flows over the London Bridge. I had thought many of them were dead. Everyone looked down at their feet as they walked. The chair she sat in looked like a burnished throne. It glowed on the marble where the glass held up by standards. It was covered in fruited vines. A golden Cupidon peeped out of the vines. This is a very glittery room for a very lavish woman. An image of “Philomel” is on the wall. Someone with bad nerves asks you to stay the night. Two women are sitting at the bar talking and trying to get a few more drinks in before the bar closes. The speaker is sad that magic no longer exists in the world. Philomel is brought back into the conversation. “Smyrna Merchant” asks another speaker for a weekend of sex. Tiresias begins to speak. There is a very loveless sex scene between a man and a woman. Someone begins to sing a very depressing song. Phlebas decays at the bottom of the ocean. When you begin to feel too proud, think of this man. The landscape is made of stone with no water. Two people are walking. One of the people sees a third person through his peripheral vision. When he turns to look at the third person, they magically disappear into thin air. Thunder cracks very loudly. Shantih is the last word that is repeated three times. It translates to “The Peace which passeth understanding”. There seems to be no way to get away from the past. In “The Waste Land” there are many memories and flashbacks. This is a very common reoccurring theme throughout the story. There are very many personal memories in this story, however, Eliot seems to want his audience to focus more on the cultural memories. Eliot was a daydreamer. We tend to see this in his stories, especially this one since he refers to the past so often. There could be a few reasons why Eliot likes to focus on culture. There are many people who aren’t aware, or have forgotten, about their culture in the past. Eliot wants to, in a way, refresh their memory. Another reason for his focus on culture could be because he feels like society is declining because people don’t quite understand the history of their culture. He could be right, and he could be wrong. “Part III discusses declining influence of ‘The Waste Land’ after the Second World War when the poem ‘began to harden into literary artifact’ (Mixing).” Eliot’s poem took a hit and started spiraling downwards. “Dr. Crawford’s concluding remarks about the poem’s dwindling influence are somewhat premature. Rather than ‘hardening’ into a monument of early modernism ‘The Waste Land’ with its highly evocative indeterminateness would appear ideally suited to current literary movements such as Structuralism and Deconstruction (Mixing).” Even though Eliot like to reflect on the past, he may have been right. Because of his memories and his strong belief in cultural memories, change happened throughout the world. Works Cited: Eliot, T. S. "The Waste Land." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams. 9th ed. Vol. F. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 2530-543. Print. Mixing Memory and Desire. The Waste Land and British Novels by Fred D. Crawford Review by: Peter Murphy The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 36, No. 142 (May, 1985), pp. 298-299 Reading "The Waste Land": Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation. by Jewel Spears Brooker; Joseph Bentley Review by: Tim Redman American Literature, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 158-159