Comment on the symbolism and imagery in eliot‟s "the waste land"
Answers
In The Waste Land, Eliot makes use of old myths and legends to draw symbols from. I will mention only a few randomly selected ones. Spring and winter denote the birth and death cycles, or growth and decay, for example. Fire is used for explosive passions, spiritual revelation and cleansing, etc. Fisher king’s barren land and impotency represent emptiness and spiritual sterility in the life of the modern men. Then there are biblical symbols like the tree, the dry bones, the rock, the legend of the quest for the Holy Grail, the Hanged man etc.
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
In the above lines, the oil and tar present in the river symbolizes the dirt and filth in the modern life.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
Water has a very complicated symbolism, where once it is shown to be life giving and something that invokes fertility, it is also shown to be a symbol of death via drowning.
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
The wet Hyacinth girl represents sexuality and corruption. She is not a representator of innocence now.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she...
Then there is Madame Sosostris, who is not able to do justice with the tarot cards, which are supposed to be a powerful science of fortune telling in the past, and so this hints for unreliability and a weak future.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Contrary to the earlier view, winter is shown to bear dried tubers, or symbolizes a hope for life in the future.
April is the cruellest month, breeding...
April, which is the month of happiness and growth (as we see in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales) is referred to as a cruel month. The whole of the text is full of such symbols and parallels.
"The wasteland" is a modern poem of T.S.Elliot. It symbolizes the devastation that was caused after the massacre of World war I.
- The poet compares the rivers which sweat oil and tar, which symbolizes polluted water of the river. The pollution caused by the emission of the industries and vehicles.
- He also says, unlike the past when winter used to be beautiful with blossoms and beauty, now the winters are dry and are like tubers which are worn out.