The Waste Land

By. T. S. Eliot
“. . . A sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives and
living that has settled upon us, and that evokes nothing
of our spiritual life, our potentialities, or even our
physical courage—until, of course, it gets us into one
of its inhuman wars.” (Joseph Campbell, The Power
OUTLINE

1-T. S. Eliot
2-About the poem
3-The 4 main
stories
8-The ending..
 The Hollow Four
Men Quartets

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 –1965) a poet, dramatist,

and literary critic received the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1948.
He’s an American poet moved to the UK and was a
hard worker i.e. he didn't wait for inspiration to
come but he looked for words and spent much
efforts to write his poems.
During his life, his wife became mad and that really
touched him a lot thus he couldn't live a peaceful
The Rock life so he decided to travel around the world and
this journey was a source for this poem..
The
Cocktail
Party
The Family
Reunion
 e x t r a or dinary
n a r y a n d an 2 2.
e v o lu t io n t h e 1 9
It is a r m p u b li shed i
o d e r n i st poe
m
l o f t h e Dead.
t I : T h e Buria
Par
e o f C h ess.
r t I I : A Gam
P a
e S e r m o n.
r t I I I: T h e F ir
Pa
h b y W a ter.
D ea t
Part IV:
n d e r S a id.
W h a t t h e Thu
Part V:
 First, before
T. S. Eliot’s
waste Land,
there are 3
more waste
lands..
 He was born for a king and a queen King Oedipus
A prophecy tells that he will kill his
father and marry his mother..
As a result, his father gave him to a high
point..
A servant tied him and let him wander
alone..
A shepherd found him..
He told him the prophecy “destiny”
He ran away meeting a caravan and
killed his father..
2 sins are committed accidently..
Many results and hard scarifies..
By the help of Tiresias  , Oedipus solve Solution
this problem by plucking his eyes and
practicing great remorse. The actual
repentance comes after the removal of
sin ‘’adultery murdering”

After committing sins.. Land became

waste.. Men and women became Problem
potent.. Fruitlessness, uselessness,
aimlessness and all “ness” are witnessed
and they move down in the dump
exactly as this circle in this slide..
 Second,
T. S. Eliot
also
derived th
e
story of F
isher
King and
Arthur Ki
ng“
 Fisher King

Fisher King is the one who made 15 lines and a circle.. “A

Democratic city..”
During wars, he managed to find the Holy Grail he kept in Chapel
Arthur used the Grail to put wine on it, so it is a symbol of
“fertility”
Fisher brought it and assigned knights to guard it..
The guardians are drunk and the Holy Grail is stolen..
More than one sin are committed especially drinking and
stealing
Fisher sent15 knights to give the Grail back..
Fisher’s wife fills in love with the only knight that comes
back..
So the bad consequences of this love Led to barren and sterile life
 Third,
T. S. Eliot
also deriv
ed
the story o
f
Ezekiel
 Ezekiel

He is an Israeli prophet with 2 prophecies to the son of Israel

“Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak to thee, your
alters shall be desolate, and your finaglers shall be broken, and
I will cut down your slain men before your idols”

“Your land shall be waste and the grasshopper shall be

burden and desire shall frail and dust shall remain on the
land as it was”

Why.. Because they worship idols

Redemption occurs in the book of Isaiah “333”.

It talks about the waste land saying that “Masiah will be a river in
a dry land and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land”
 Many sins like
Adultery;
Waste
Robbery; Lands
drinking wine;
Polytheisms..

Therefore, our land needs salvation because of the

overwhelming sins we live in but we are not ware
of our sins or even our redemption.
 Sybil..
The Thesis Statement

In the Roman mythology, she asks Apollo to live as many

years as grain of sands..
Her stupidity led her to forget asking about ‘’everlasting
physical youth”

Accordingly, she became ugly, old, and small like a finger in

a bottle wishing to reach the 5-letter word, “DEATH”.

Today, the western civilization is like Sybil.

It will end up like her in a way that people will ask for death but 3
“NOs” will appear “NO rebirth.. NO death.. And No
redemption”..
 Sybil..
The Thesis Statement

T. S. Eliot used on the top of his poem the following lines..

“NAM SYBYLLAM quidem cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi

in ampulla pendere,et cum illi pueri dicerent...For Isra
pound.”

Time will come when we dearly wish to die. No one can imagine
how horrible life might be then to the extent that the most
frequently desired wish is death. The mere thought of this gives me
a violent shudder!
 -Live in despair, and religion offers no
hope.. World War I and the Spanish
flu?
 -Catastrophic events.. we are quite
alone in a chaotic universe.
 -Feeling fragmented and disconnected
from the self, society, and nature,
human beings believe that life is futile.
 -Eliot’s purpose is to rehabilitate a
discredited system of beliefs to help us
cope with life’s unforeseen events.
 -To accomplish this goal, Eliot takes us
on a journey of the soul that will reveal
meaning, truth, virtue, and the good
From life.
Chaos to
Harmony
 -It’s a mirror of the apparent
meaninglessness of life.
 -Cryptic and chaotic networks of
references, the poem is an attempt to
provide mankind with the way back to
the Garden—the place of unity, of non-
duality between male and female, good
and evil, and God and man.
 -Discovering these connections is by
rising above the temporal (the here and
now) and embracing the spiritual (the
eternal).
 -In the end, this poem is meant to
provide optimism by presenting
enduring spiritual truths to encourage
the flowering of our humanity.
From
Chaos to
Harmony
 The great massage is
to make civilization alive
by having morals and
beliefs..
If the vise versa is the goal,
we will witness what we
don’t want..
April is the curliest month
In the first 7 lines, the speaker is not identified.
But the most important thing is that the speaker
dislikes spring because it brings active life and
refreshes the memory of the person. It's a month
that pushes people to think about past life and
plans for future life as well.. Spring is a month of
Rebirth and flourish; but that man is not in favor
of it. He liked to be passive, he is just frozen.
Strange.. Since life is also full of strange things..

Maybe, this is why the 1st part verses end almost

in “ING” it's not the “ing” form but it is the
present participle which is used to talk about the
frozen moments.
The 4th part that talked about
unreal city “London” where all
people work just like robots
automatically starting at 9 am and
end at 5 pm. No meaning of life at all
there but the concern is money.
-The waste land is an ever-present
dimension of civilization.
-We need to accept that all wars are
one war, all battles are one battle,
journeys, rivers, rooms, loves, and
ultimately, all people are one
person.
-All of the specific examples of
these things in the poem are
representative of their kind.

Principle of
The Waste
Land: Unity
-The poem is associated with the
impulse to search, discover, and seek
change for the sake of self-knowledge
and of sharing the experience with
others;
 -It implies the awareness of human
binaries—mortal and immortal, death
and life, good and evil, male and
female—and the struggle to integrate
these antagonistic elements into a new
whole: an authentic identity;
 -It suggests an inward return to the
divine source of life for the sake of
living in harmony with the self as well
as with nature and society..

“A Modern
Hell”
-Protagonist/Fisher King finds the
resolve to act rather than remain
passive, to do more than just sit and
fish.
-“Shall I at least get my lands in
order?”
He utters a series of fragments in
foreign languages, each suggesting a
plan, endurance and renewal.
-Poem ends with the incantation
“Shantih shantih shantih”
-The peace that passeth understanding
is attainable through rebirth which can
be attained only through death.

Ending