ALLUSIONS IN THE WASTELAND

Thalia Nicholl 7494114

Thesis: TS Eliots The Wasteland is a distinct landmark in Modern poetry, and

through function of allusion emphasizes the movement of the first World War in
relation to English Literature. T.S. Eliots poem describes a mood of deep
disillusionment stemming both from the collective experience of the first world war and
from Eliots personal travails.

Main Point 1: Loss of Tradition

-These opening lines, then, pose the question of the poets originality in relation to a
tradition that seems barely capable of nourishing the dull roots of the modern poets
sensibility.
-Even if he could become inspired, however, the poet would have no original materials to
work with. His imagination consists only of a heap of broken images, in the words of
line 22, the images he inherits from literary ancestors going back to the Bible.
-

Main Point 2: Rebirth

-For Eliots speaker, this rebirth is cruel, because any birth reminds him of death. The soil
out of which the spring plants grow is composed of the decayed leaves of earlier plants.
April is the month of Easter, and Eliot is invoking here both the Christian story of the
young god who dies in order to give new life to the rest of us and the many other versions
of this myth.
-The poem ultimately does promise a new beginning, but Eliots speaker appears,to
prefer winter to spring, and thus to deny the joy and beauty associated with rebirth.
- He emphasizes the role of death and decay in the process of growth, most memorably in
the conversation between two veterans who meet near London bridge after the war:
Stetson! / You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! / That corpse you planted last
year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? / Or has the
sudden frost disturbed its bed?

Main Point 3: The War

Other quotations or translations come from writers of near-sacred status: Shakespeare
(Those are pearls that were his eyes, line 48) and Dante (I had not thought death had
undone so many. / Sighs, short and infrequent were exhaled, lines 63-4).

Conclusion: Eliots use of allusion and quotation seems in part a response to the dilemma
of coming at the end of a great tradition. The poet seeks to address modern problems
the war, industrialization, abortion, urban lifeand at the same time to participate in a
literary tradition.