The Waste Land
By. T. S. Eliot
Malaka Mohammed Eshweikh
“. . . 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
Men
Four
Quartets
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 –1965) a poet, dramatist,
and literary critic received the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1948.
The Rock
The
Cocktail
Party
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 life
so he decided to travel around the world and this
journey was a source for this poem..
The Family
Reunion
He was born for a king and a queen
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..
King Oedipus
By the help of Tiresias , Oedipus
solve 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 potent.. Fruitlessness,
uselessness, aimlessness and all
“ness” are witnessed and they move
down in the dump exactly as this
circle in this slide..
Solution
Problem
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
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;
Robbery;
drinking wine;
Waste
Lands
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 life.
From
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 everpresent 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