The Waste Land (1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot. It is perhaps the
most famous and most written-about long poem of the 20th century. Despite the alleged obscurity of the
poem the poem has nonetheless become a familiar touchstone of modern literature.
The title probably originates with Malory's Morte d'Arthur. A poem strikingly similar in theme and
language called Waste Land, written by Madison Cawein, was published in 1913.
Eliot's original title for the poem was He do the Policemen in Different Voices, a reference to Our Mutual
Friend by Charles Dickens, and is a comment on the skill of Sloppy in reading out Court cases from the
newspapers. This would help the reader to understand that, while there are many different voices
(speakers) in the poem, there is one central consciousness. What was lost by the rejection of this title
Eliot might have felt compelled to restore by commenting on the commonalities of his characters in his
note about Tiresias. The poem's title is often mistakenly given in two ways: "Waste Land" is shortened to
"Wasteland" and "The" is omitted. "Waste Land" as two capitalized words comes from Weston's usage
and, in a letter to Ezra Pound, Eliot politely insisted that the title include the word "The."
Talking about the structure The Waste Land is a poem divided into five sections. The five parts are
entitled:
1.The Burial of the Dead
2. A Game of Chess
3.The Fire Sermon
4.Death by Water
5. What the Thunder Said
The first four sections of the poem correspond to the Greek classical elements of Earth (burial), Air
(voices - the draft title for this section was "In the Cage", an image of hanging in air; also, the element of
Air is generally thought to be aligned with the intellect and the mind), Fire (passion), and Water (the
draft of the poem had additional water imagery in a fishing voyage.) The title of the fifth section could be
a reference to the fifth element of Aether, which is included in many mystical traditions (one line here
mentions ethereal rumors.)
The first section is called the The Burial of the Dead. The atmosphere is pessimistic. The first section
speaks about death. It adopts intertextuality as a favorite media, right from the fist line and difficult or
impossible regeneration. Contemporary title has been turned upside down. Generally speaking April is
considered the month during which nature is born again. Here there is a different matter: April is
considered cruel because it promises aspect that will not be satisfied. Moving from denotation to
connotation the intelligent reader will understand that human kind doesn't seem to have many
possibilities to be regenerated. In that all Western culture seems to leave in a condition of cultural slat.
The section is made up of the juxtaposition of scenes that do not seem to follow a logical convention.
What creates a lack between the scenes in the atmosphere. Scene one provides an image of natural
waste and it is juxtapose to a summer scene follow by an image of waste of a rock of trees that don't
give any shelter. There is no water and to be precise not even the sound of water can be hear. Rather
you have the idea of a red rocking scenery and then comes the image of a girl coming from the hyacinth
garden girl, full of sensuality, and the idea of a lack knowledge. And then comes Madam Sosostris a
vulgar figure replacing the well culture . Sosostris is a mock Egyptian name (suggested to Eliot by
'Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana', the name assumed by a character in Aldous Huxley's novel
Chrome Yellow who dresses up as a gypsy to tell fortunes at a fair). In the end we have the image of a
ghostly London, where people going to work in the morning remains ghostly figures. Their are composed
to the "dannati" in "Dante inferno".
The intelligent reader understands that Eliot disregards time references in that he puts together people
who lived during the Punic wars and contemporary people. The style of the work in part grows out of
Eliot's interest in exploring the possibilities of dramatic monologue. This interest dates back at least as far
as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot also enjoyed the music hall, and something of the flavour of
this popular form of entertainment gets into the poem. It follows the pattern of the musical fugue, in
which many voices enter throughout the piece re-stating the themes.
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