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OVERVIEW:
Eliot believed that modern society lacked a vital sense of community and a spiritual center. The waste land of the poem is modern European culture, which had come too far from its spiritual roots.
Eliot alludes to various ancient religions as well as to the medieval legend of the Holy Grail, finding in them the common thread of the mythic cycle of the death and resurrection of gods. More specifically, he found in a book by Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance (1920), the story of the Fisher King, a mythic figure whose loss of power or fertility produces a corresponding blight or drought in his kingdom. Only through the death of this king and his replacement by a new, young, and vigorous knight can the land be restored to fertility.
Eliot's poem, depicts modern society as being in the infertile part of the cycle. Human beings are isolated, and sexual relations are sterile and meaningless. Because of the variety and relative obscurity of Eliot's allusions, readers must work through the poem's footnotes several times to appreciate it, but the general impression of isolation, decadence, and sterility comes through in every reading.
ELIOT'S STYLE
The poem presents a series of conversations or scenes that lead through the wasteland to a moment of hope, the expectation of rain, at the end. The sections are numbered to indicate shifts of scene and speaker.
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PART 1. The first part, "The Burial of the Dead," presents the voice of a countess looking back on her pre-World War I youth as a lovelier, freer, more romantic time. Her voice is followed by a solemn description of present dryness when "the dead tree gives no shelter." Then the poem returns to a fragmentary love scene of the past, perhaps the countess's. The scene shifts to a fortune-teller who reads the tarot cards and warns of death. The final section of part 1 presents a contemporary image of London crowds moving along the streets blankly, as if dead. One pedestrian calls out to another, grotesquely asking if the corpse in his garden has sprouted yet, suggesting the necessity of death before rebirth can take place. In the final line of this section, the poet calls the reader a hypocrite who thinks he is any better off.
The subsequent parts of the poem are similarly complex, shifting unexpectedly to different locations and speakers.
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PART 2. "A Game of Chess" presents a neurotic rich woman frustrated by her male companion's reserve. This is followed by a gossipy barroom conversation about a woman who was unfaithful to her soldier husband during the war and who had an abortion to hide her guilt.
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PART 3. The third section, "The Fire Sermon," mingles snatches of an old marriage song celebrating the Thames River with a contemporary image of the filthy, trash-filled Thames. Then, starting at line 215, the ancient seer Tiresias narrates a banal and loveless scene of seduction of a typist by her "lover," a petty real estate agent. The scene is squalid and passionless; the sexual act is meaningless to both participants. This is followed by contrasting images of Queen Elizabeth I boating on the Thames with her lover, the earl of Leicester.
PART 4. The fourth section, "Death by Water," fulfills the prophecy made by the fortune-teller in part 1. It is a brief section, marking death as the end, or, in keeping with the whole poem's structure, death that must precede transformation and rebirth.
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PART 5. The final section, "What the Thunder Said," begins with images of a journey over barren and rocky ground. The thunder is sterile, being unaccompanied by rain, by a mysterious sense of some compassionate spirit visits the traveler. Chaotic images of rot and of a crumbling city lead up to line 393, at which time a cock (a symbol of Christ) crows, announcing the coming rain.
The poem ends with the exposition of three terms from Hindu lore: Datta (to give alms), Dayadhvam (to have compassion), and Damyata (to practice self-control). Then the poem seems to collapse into a rush of quotations and allusions-- a flood of meanings and suggestions ending with the word shanti (peace).
[Text from Kathleen McCoy's and Judith Harlan's ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM 1785 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992: 266-67)