The Waste Lands, an Innovation of Style
By Matthew Cox

“The Waste Lands” by T.S. Elliot is considered to be one of the greate4st modernist poems written. The writer shows his disillusionment with the lack of morality in post World War I Europe in the work. The plot involves the Fisher King who tries to save himself from sexual dysfunction and his kingdom from infertility. He is a hero who is similar to King Arthur that must complete an unspecific quest. Elliot does not follow traditional poetic structures. For example, he changes tone, writing style, and uses foreign languages in the work. T.S. also uses allusions to other writings including Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of Locke” and “From Ritual to Romance” by Jessie L. Weston. Each of the five sections correlates to the five elements of ancient Greece. The poet Ezra Pound helps with editing the poem and advising Elliot with creating it. “The Waste Lands” by T.S. Elliot is one of the most influential writings in the 20th Century.

Although the writer Thomas Sterns Elliot, better known as T.S. Elliot, writes prose, drama, and literary criticism, he is best known for writing “The Waste Lands (wikipedia).” Elliot first publishes the poem in literary magazines known as the Criterion and the Dial in 1922. Many literary experts say that this work is one of the best examples of modernist poetry. Although many traditional forms of poetry use unified themes and a lucid structure, “The Waste Lands” does not. It uses unrelated concepts and references to history, mythology, religion, and other areas. Some parts of the poem are in other languages included Hindi. The patterns in the poem are so complex, that that Elliot almost put footnotes in his work. Some critics felt that the poet writes the poem in such a complicated way, that he is playing a practical joke on them.

Elliot apparently writes “The Waste Land” to show his disillusionment to the ethical decay of Europe after World War I. It seems to symbolize a quest for spiritual truth much like the search for the Holy Grail. Thomas says that gets many of his ideas from two books. The first one is called From Ritual to Romance (1920) by Jessie L. Weston. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890) by Sir James Frazer. Elliot got many of his ideas for the poem from his wife and friend and poet Ezra Pound. He helped T.S. edit the original draft from 800 lines to 434 lines.

Although many interpretations of “The Waste Land” exist, the five sections can be interpreted as a journey by a character known as the Fisher King. After his genitals are damaged, the character loses his fertility. With his reproductive powers gone, the Fisher King’s kingdom dries up into a waste land. In order to save his kingdom, the main character must complete several tasks. Jessie Weston points out that the idea for such quests start with an ancient myth that dates to prehistoric times. Even stories of Christian faith journeys draw from this tale. Elliot says that he got his ideas for “The Waste Lands” from this story. He refers to the myth in his work.

The writing style is eclectic and shifts from one form to another. For example, it changes from being a satire to a prophecy. The tone, locations, and speakers change abruptly. Also, it borrows from different literary styles in various parts of the world. The famous lines include the first phrase “April is the cruelest month” and the Sanskrit chant “Shantih shantih shantih” in the last line.

Elliot took a long time to complete the work (Wikipedia). In 1921, the poet Wyndham Lewis told his friend and writer Sydney Schiff that Elliot is writing a poem that is in four parts. It departs from conventional forms of writing. Eliot told his friend John Quinn that he wants to finish his incomplete poem. The writer Richard Aldington writes that T.S. gets ideas for ending “The Waste Land” by walking through a cemetery while discussing an “Elegy Written in a Country Graveyard” by Thomas Gray. The poet writes his masterpiece while recovering from an emotional breakdown. T.S. shows an early version to Ezra Pound. He recommends shorting the work by removing unnecessary or repetitive lines.

Unlike previous poems, the structure of this work changes. For example, the section including “The typist home at teatime” is written in regular stanzas with Iambic pentameters. Elliot uses the rhyming scheme of abab. This is the same writing form that Thomas Gray uses for an “Elegy Written in a Country Graveyard.” Towards the end of the poem, T.S. gives up the four line stanzas. He does not see much use in them.

In the section of the “The Fire Sermon,” Elliot imitates Alexander Pope’s style of writing in “The Rape of Lock” by using heroic couplets. Literary critics say that the character in this part resembles Bloom from James Joyce:

Leaving the bubbling beverage to cool,
Fresca slips softly to the needful stool,
Where the pathetic tale of Richardson
Eases her labour till the deed is done . . . (Wikipedia)

Pound wrote short stanzas that Elliot wanted to be placed between the five sections of “The Waste Lands.” One of these pieces Elliot calls “Dirge” and begins as:

Full fathom five your Bleistein lies
Under the flatfish and the squids.
Graves' Disease in a dead Jew's eyes!
Where the crabs have eat the lids… (Wikipedia)

Vivien, Elliot’s wife, asks him to remove a line in the “A Game of Chess” section which goes “An we shall play a game of chess/The ivory men make company between us/Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door (Wikipedia).” She did not want these lines in the poem because they seemed to reveal private things about their marriage. T.S. put the lines back in the work in 1960 after Vivien died.
Elliot wishes to call the writing “He Do the Police in Different Voices. This is allusion to “Our Mutual Friend” by Charles Dickens. T.S. wants the reader to know that there are many different voices in the poem but one consciousness. The writer feels that information that is lost by the title may be explained by commenting on common characters in the work by his notes on Tiresias. Elliot chooses the title “The Waste Land” in order to connect it with Jessie L. Weston’s book on the grail stories called From Ritual to Romance. The poem’s title is also a metaphor to the Fisher King’s sexual wounding. This causes his kingdom and farmlands to become sterile. Many people misspell the name in two ways as “The Wasteland,” or simply “Waste Land” without “The.”

The writer starts the poem with a Latin and Greek epigraph from “The Satyricon” of Petronius. It means “I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, Sibyl, ‘what do you want?’ She replies ‘I want to die’” in English (Wikipedia). , Elliot divides the work into five different sections:

1. The Burial of the Dead
2. A Game of Chess
3. The Fire Sermon
4. Death by Water
5. What the Thunder Said

Elliot uses the first four parts to symbolize the element of ancient Greece. For example, the first section represents earth or burial. Part two corresponds with air. Ancient people associate the mind with this element. Fire in the third part connects flames with passion. Water in the fourth part evokes the fear of drowning. The fifth section refers to aether which is a perfect matter that cannot change or be damaged.

Elliot includes several pages of notes after the poem explaining the metaphors in “The Waste Land.” Some critics say that these notes help readers to understand the poem. Others argue that they only confuse people with contradictory meanings. Some of the passages are unannotated. Elliot’s publisher put the notes after the poem to make the printing longer. Some literary experts think that the notes are red herrings.

Elliot writes “The Waste Lands” to explore possibilities of creating dramatic monologue. He enjoys going to music halls. The writer puts this feeling into his work by using the pattern of music fugue. Many voices enter in various parts of the piece and restate the themes. When one reads the poem, they will enjoy the way it moves from one voice or style to another. Also, reader could also like the way Elliot uses foreign languages in the structure.

“The Waste Lands” by T.S. Elliot is one of the most influential writings in the 20th Century. He uses the work to express his dissatisfaction of unethical behavior in Europe after the First World War. The poem involves a King Arthur-like character called the Fisher King. This is an archetypical knight who goes on quest to save his kingdom from infertility. T.S. breaks from traditional poetic forms by changing writing style, tone and using foreign languages in the piece. Each of the five sections relates to the five elements in ancient Greece. Elliot also shows influences of other writers including Dickens, Pope and his friend Ezra Pound.


Work Cited

“The Waste Land.” Wikipedia. 5 March 2008. 27 March 2008.
http://www.answers.com/The%20Waste%20Land