Hitesh S. Vaghani
Roll no. - 21
SEM - III
Paper no. – 11
Year – 2010-11
Topic: Various Themes of the Wasteland.
Submitted to Dr.Dilip Barad
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.
Various Themes of the Wasteland.
Eliot maintained great reverence for myth and the western literary canon and he packed his work full of alliusions, quotations, footnotes, and scholarly exegeses. In “the tradition and the individual talent”, an essay first published in 1919, Eliot praises the literary tradition and states that the best writers are those who write with a sense of continuity with those writers who came before, as if all literature constituted a stream in which each new writer must enter and swim only the very best new work will subtly shift the stream’s current and thus improve the literary tradition. Eliot also argued that the literary past must be integrated into contemporary poetry.
The wasteland has been variously misunderstood or variously understood. Most divergent and contradictory opinions have been expressed about its theme. Thus F.R leavis writes that the poem expresses, ’the disilhusionment of a generation ‘the post-war generation in Europe, and that it merely presents, “a vision of desolation and spiritual draught “others have said that the poem is merely a; “diagnosis of the spiritual distemper of the age”, it offers no solution and that its message is one of despair and pessimism eliot has no hopes of salvation to offer to the modern world. There are still others who regard the waste land as “a sign for the vanlshed glory of the past”. This extreme view is opposed by. Those who go to the other extreme and affirm that the poem is a social document, a faithfull reproduction of the conditions of the life in the contemporary world. There may be a grain of truth in each of these views but none of them embodies the whole truth.
The theme of the poem is the spiritual and emotional sterility of the modern world. According to cleanth books, its theme is life- in death, the living death of the modern waste landers. Man has lost his passion, his faith on god religion- his passional participation in religion and this delay or faith has resulted in the loss or vitality. Both spiritual and emotional consequently. The life in the modern waste land is a life-in-death, a living death, like that of the sibyl at cumae, according to eliot’s philosophy, in so far as we human beings we must act and do either evil or good, and it is better to do evil than to do nothing. Modern man has lost his sense of good and evil, and this keeps him from being alive, from acting. In the modern desolate land the people are dead; they merely exist like dead things. As Stephen spender has point out, they are to be compared to such dead things as a stick, a gutter, a pipe. At the most, theirs is a life-in-death, a life of complete inactivity, listlessness and apathy that is why winter is welcome to them and April is the cruelest or months, for it reminds them of the sunings or life and, “they dislike to be roused from their death-in-life.”
The poem thus presents,” a vision of dissolution and spiritual draught”. This spiritual and emotional sterility or the denizens of the waste land arises from the degeneration, vulgarization, and commercialization of sex. Eliot’s study of the fertility myths of different people had convinced him that sex act is the source of the life and vitality, when it is exercised for the sake of procreation, and when it is an expression of love. But when it is severed from its primary function, and is exercised’ for the sake of momentary pleasure of monetary benefit, it becomes a source of degeneration and corruption. It then represents the primary of the flesh over the spirit, and this result in spiritual delay and death. It was a woman, and Adam’s concupisiance or obedience to the flesh that led to the original sin and the fail or man, and it is this very obedience to the flesh which accounts for the spiritual and emotional barrenness the modern age. Through I.A.Richards is of the opinion that the waste land represents “ the serverence of poetry and belief.’ i.e. ot shows that poetry can be enjoyed without reference to the beliefs of the poet, there can be no denying the fact that the waste land is essentially a religions poem, even a Christian poem. As cleanth brooks puts it, “the Christian material at the bases of the poem is that human nature is liable to the temptations of the flesh, giving way to these temptations means a denial of the spirit, sisobediance to god, and consequently it results in suffering and degeneration further, with reference to the ancient myth like the myth of king fisher, eliot shows that regeneration is possible through penance and suffering, and this is the very basis of christiarity.
The waste land reflects contemporary spirit in its totality. Its anxiety, its despair, its neurosis, its boredom and mental vacuity have all been brought out. In the contemporary wasteland there is corruption and sexual degeneration of all levels. The title a game of chess suggests that sex has become a matter of intrigue, a matter of moves and counter-moves, a source or momentary pleasure, a sordid game of seduction and exploitation of the innocent. There is the fashionable society woman who, despite all her pomp and show, despite all the luxury with which she is surrounded, is bored and fed up with the meaningless routine of her life. And is neurotic and hysterical as consequences. Her love too suffers from mental vacuity and is unable to keep up even small conversation. To her repeated and imperative, “what are you thinking, thinking think?” he replies,
I think we are in rat’s alley where the dead men lost their bones.
Thus, expressing the utter anarchy, futility and chaos of values in the modern world. Life is like a dead alley, leading nowhere, and if is full of dead things-dead spiritual and emotionally. As cleanth brooks points out, a suggestion in thus thrown out that even death in the desolaie land of today does not lead regeneration. Life has become a meaningless routine,
----- hot water of-ten
And if rains, a closed car a four.
Their sex-relation too is a meaningless routine, a more mechanical relationship bringing them no satisfaction.
Sex-relationship in the middle classes is equally mechanical. This is seen in the mechanical relationship of the typist and the clerk. The typist gives herself to the clerk with a sense of total indifference and apathy. There is neither repulsion nor any pleasure, and this absence of feeling is a measure of the sterility of the age. It is just animal like copulation as soon the young man has departed the typist re-arranges her hear, and puts a record on the gramophone, “with automatic hands”. This perversion of sex is also to be seen in the lower classes of society. The songs of three themes daughters clearly show that they have been sexually exploited but they can do nothing about it. They and their people are too poor and to apathetic to make any efforts for the betterment of their lot. Man has grow inhuman humanity has lost its humanity. That sex is matter of a momentary pleasure or a business proposition is also suggested by the image of the deserted themes, which in the summer was a favourite picnic spot for the nymphs and their rich friends. Further, the conversation of the ladies in some London put also brings out the sordid nature of sex-relationship in the contemporary easte land.not only has sex been vulgarised And commercialized there also prevail abnormal sex-practices of various kinds. Thus MR. Eugenides is a homo-sexual and hotel more polt is not bed of homosexuality, a relationship which is essentially sterile. All rurope is burning with just and sexuality.
Such perversion of sex results in neurosis, boredom, ennui, rustration and disillusionment, despair and hopelessness of the modern man. This is symbolished by the crouds flowing, over London Bridge, listless and apathetic with their eyes cast down. All this is faithfully mirrored in the waste land, and in this respect the poem may be called social documents. The picture is complicated by suggesting in various ways the ravages caused by the world war i. thus there is the image of the London towers falling down, the hooded hordes moving along and the conversation of ladies in the pub about Albert’s returning home from the war.
However, it would be wrong to say that the waste land merely depicts the disillusionment of the post-war generation, and that it is a more diagnosis of the distemper of the modern age, without any solution, or hope of salvation. It no doubt, deals with the tragedy of the modern age, but it also shows that tragedy is at the heart of life, all life, in all ages the past and the present are telescoped, and it is thus shown that what is happening in the present age did also happen in the past. For this reason, it will be wrong to call the poem “a sigh for the glories of a vanished past”; Eliot has not glorified the past at the expense of the present. Rather by his mythical-method he has, as mathlessen points out revealed. ‘The resembling contrasis between the past and present. Sexual sins, perversion of sex, have always led to degeneration and delay. The sexual sins of the king fisher and his soldiers laid waste his kingdom: and ancient the Bes was laid waste because its king. Was guilty of the sin of incest. Sexual violence has always been-there Philomela was raped and her tongue was severed so that she may not reveal the crime. Reference to Elizabeth and Leicester in the song of the daughters of the themes shows that sex-relationship in the past also has been equally futile and meaningless. In all these respects, the present resembles the past. The only different is that in the past, suffering and penance resulted in spiritual regeneration and return to health: Philomela was transformed onto the bird of golden song. And king fisher was cured and his kingdom redeemed. Helen Gardner agrees with this view and points out that the poem is not a mere presentation of the modern dilemma- but it also discovers that, “the modern dilemma is the historic dilemma”. The poem demonstrates that, “beneath both beauty and ugliness there. Luck in all classes and in all ages boredom and terron all wars are the same war, all love-making the same love-making all home comings the same home-comings.” In this way university is impared to the modern and the topical.
Thus the poem does not merely reflect; ‘the disillusionment of a generation’, it goes much deeper, to quote bullough, “it goes beyond a mere diagnosis of the spiritual distemper of the age”; it also make a promise and a prophecy. The picture or the contemporary waste land which it presents might be bleak and gloomy but it does not end on a note of despair. It suggests that regeneration is possible, through suffering and penance. Man has sinned and he must at one to god for his sins through suffering. In the last section of the poem, the thunder is already heard and the clouds are there. Thus a promise is held out of the coming of the rain of divine grace, only if man will repent and do penance as the king fisher and the king. Oedipus did. Eliot brings together the wisdom of the Eliot and the west and shows that spiritual regeneration can come. If only we heed the voice of the thunder: give, sympathise, and control. These fragements the poet has shared to put his own land in order.
Such is the theme and such the message of the waste land. However, eloit does not assert anything; he conveys his meaning through delicate suggestion, the use of implication, and the use of the mythical-technique. This accounts for the general misunderstanding of the poem’s significance.
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