Analysis_of_T.S_Eliot's_Burial_of_the_Dead

T.S Eliot, Wasteland: The Burial of the Dead T.S Eliot lived in the United States while earning a Master’s degree in philosophy at Harvard University; he then stayed in Paris for a year until he returned to Harvard to pursue his doctorate in philosophy; until he settled in England in 1914 where he began to write much of his poetry. He also lived in England during the First World War, which is what The Wasteland is based upon. The Wasteland shares the themes of death and hopelessness like his other work, Hollow Men, but it focuses rather on the civilizations destroyed by WW1 than the people of these civilizations who were the hollow men. T.S Eliot continued his prestigious literary career by writing a lot more depressing poems, and a few not so depressing ones once he converted to Christianity. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1948, and he continued to live in London until he died in 1965 at the age of 76. The Wasteland was written in 1922. It is a negative poem and essentially shows the horrible world created from our search for a better one through the act of WW1. It is separated into five parts; the first being the Burial Of The Dead, the second called A Game Of Chess, the third The Fire Sermon, the fourth Death By Water, and the final part What The Thunder Said. It is these parts that make many readers call The Wasteland very obscure and confusing since narrators, setting, tone, mood, and themes are always changing with each part of the poem. However it is one of Eliot’s greatest and most important works since it deals with the theme of death after WWI and because it can be interpreted many ways by readers because of its obscure nature. This poem also contains many allusions to other literary works, like the Latin/Roman novel “Satyricon”, two Bible passages which is ironic since T.S Eliot wasn’t a Christian when he wrote this poem, the German opera “Tristan und Isolde”, the novel “Chrome Yellow”, and Dante’s Inferno which he incorporates into many of his other poems. Stanza 1: Like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the Wasteland begins with an epigraph. This epigraph is a reference from the Latin work of fiction “Satyricon” which is described as a Roman novel since it was written by the Roman Gaius Petronius. Now the English translation says: “For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl hanging in a jar at Cumae, and when the boys said to her, “Sibyl what do you want'” she replied, “I want to die.””. Now, these opening lines set the tone for the poem as the whole. Sibyl is a mythological character who asked the Greek God Apollo “for as many years of life as there are grains in a handful of sand” yet she failed to ask for everlasting youth and beauty. Therefore she was doomed to become very ugly for years and years and so she preserves herself in a jar. And the irony of the situation is that once she asks for something close to eternal life she finds that all she wants most is death since death offers an escape from the suffering and promises the end and therefore a new beginning for Sibyl. Therefore Eliot has established the central theme of the poem before the first stanza has begun: that death and life are easily unclear since our opinion of both always changes through experience. The Burial of The Dead is the first part of Eliot’s Wasteland and he took the title from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer about the Anglican burial service. And this again expresses the theme of death and a somewhat ominous tone to the reader. Now the poem properly begins with a description of the seasons and April is shown as the “cruellest month” and it breeds “lilacs out of the dead land”. Now April is usually associated with springtime, regeneration and rebirth, the mating season, and nice weather and most people like the spring. Except here, Eliot shows that all April represents is cruel and this oxymoron shows from the narrator’s perspective how regeneration is painful since it brings back memories of a happier past before WW1 destroyed Europe. Now he continues to describe good and happy things and associates them with death and the wasteland, like the Lilacs breeding “out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire”. This is the first reference to flowers in this poem and lilacs are traditionally associated with desire, romance, and rejuvenation. This mixes the imagery associated with death and life, and allows the contrast and oxymoron to show how death and life are easily blurred; since from death can bring life, and the fact that this life exists in turn necessitates death. The words “mixing” and “stirring” are showing the disorder of life and death, and what we remember and what we desire. It gives a sense of confusion which is literally caused by the wasteland. Now, the narrator continues by describing the season of winter as a preferable time of the year than April. Again, an oxymoron is used by saying: “Winter kept us warm” since winter is traditionally the season of death and cold and pretty much is the opposite of April. Yet, the narrator prefers this season since it is the time of forgetfulness, “covering Earth in forgetful snow”, which is similar to the river of Lethe in Ode on Melancholy yet this poem shows that ignorance is bliss and forgetting the horrible past caused by the war is preferable. Also winter’s cold “feeding a little life with dried tubers” numbs the pain caused by death and destruction and therefore it keeps us warm in a sense. After these descriptions of time and nature the poem shifts to more specific memories of a woman named Marie and her childhood. “Summer surprised us” is the start of a change in setting which in turn leads to the more personalised speaker. Also, the alliteration emphasize again the undesirable seasons which continues to represent the surprising futility of life within the wasteland since the war has easily taken so much life in a small amount of time. Eliot goes on to establish the specific setting with “the Starnbergersee”(which is a lake near Munich) “the colonnade”, and the “Hofgarten” (which is a park in Munich). All of these are places that Eliot has visited before he had written The Wasteland and here he is recollecting his own reassuring memories, just like the narrator of the poem, who remembers: summer rain in Munich and coffee in the park. These memories seem to suggest that the narrator holds on to memories that show life in its greatness and wonder yet there is a recognition that life and these trips to the past, as an attempt to regain happiness, end and enforces a state of confusion. The next lines show German speech when translated into English says: “I am not Russian at all; I am a German from Lithuania.” These lines don’t make any literal sense since three distinct regions of Europe are mentioned and Lithuania had more to do with Russia than Germany. Yet, during Eliot’s time Europe was emerging from the wreckage of WW1 and therefore this conversation in Munich conveys that same state of confusion and identity crisis in Europe after WW1. Eliot continues the poem with childhood memories, “And when we were children”, of the narrator to add a source of innocence to the poem that is not there once the war took place. Next, he adds an allusion to the assassination of the Austrian arch-duke Ferdinand which was the immediate cause of WW1 and therefore the indirect result of the creation of this poem and Eliot’s vision of the wasteland. This allusion also reinforces the theme of death and further illustrates the narrator’s background as Austrian and of aristocratic origins. The narrator, whose name is now found to be Marie, continues to relay childhood memories of sledding with a cousin and the sense of freedom is established. Yet the stanza is concluded with the lines: “I read much of the night, and go south in winter.” This has changed the tone completely and is a further reference to the landscape of winter and of death. Also, the speaker who clearly showed that she used to be assured in character and background is now effectively unable to know or experience the same feelings of her childhood. This becomes a means of reinforcing the sterility and wasteland-like qualities of the post War world. Stanza 2: The second stanza switches to another narrator who has, presumably, directly suffered from the war since he is able to describe the pain and setting of the wasteland. The narrator also has a lover who he refers to later on in the stanza. This second stanza returns to the tone of the opening lines by describing a land of “stony rubbish”- arid, sterile, devoid of life, and quite simply the wasteland of the poem’s title. The fact that this stanza also opens with a question allows the reader to infer a sense of ignorance and desperation since the wasteland was basically never seen before since such a dominating war, that was WW1, was never seen before either. Eliot alludes to two biblical passages (Ezekial chapter 2, verse 1 and Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 5) to construct a biblical dialogue between the narrator, the “Son of man”, and a higher power. The narrator is desperately searching for some sign of life, like the “roots that clutch” and branches that grow but all he finds are dry stones, dead trees and a heap of broken images. Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 5 describes the dead tree giving no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. The repetition of three “no’s” offers the sense of futility and inevitable suffering in the wasteland. However, Eliot, with the next line, offers a sense of hope and relief in his poem. He has established a forsaken plane that offers no relief from the beating sun and no trace of water except for a shadow under a “red rock”. The alliteration emphasizes the temporary relief among the ominous and fearful atmosphere of the poem. He continues with “And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you”. Now this shows that in the world of the wasteland this cycle of the shadow’s movement is the only reoccurring pattern since associations with growth and regeneration have no place. Also, it shows the narrator’s state of loneliness since all he can view from morning until the evening is his shadow following him throughout the wasteland. The land the narrator views is a land of death and debris after the war, and any handful of dust may contain human remains which is fearful to touch and therefore emphasizes the theme of death again and how frightening and catastrophic the war had been. Suddenly Eliot switches to German again, which is a direct quote from the German romantic opera “Tristan und Isolde”. The passage translates as: “Fresh blows the wind from the homeland my Irish child, why do you wait'” In the opera a sailor is overheard singing a song with these lyrics which brings back reflections of love. This causes a distinct change in tone with its story of young love, and is the first allusion of a romantic promise. Eliot then offers another allusion to a memory of the narrator a year prior where he offered hyacinths to his lover. Hyacinths are associated with resurrection since the Greek myth tells of the beautiful youth “Hyacinth” who died accidentally while playing discus with Apollo, but Apollo used the blood from the dead youth the create the beautiful flower. This offers a contrast again from the wasteland and memory, or with the past and reality. Eliot has described this vision of youthful beauty in this stanza more like English romantic poetry than from the depressing and arid wasteland he had created in the rest of poem. This conveys another sense of hope in this stanza and offers contrast from blooming hyacinths with the “dull roots” of the poem’s opening lines. “Your arms full, and your hair wet.” Now with these lines water has become a cherished element in the wasteland since here; it brings forth flowers and hyacinth girls, and the possibility of happiness. Yet this vision causes the narrator’s, eyes to fail him, his speech to leave him, and the symbol of love renders him helpless and he is left neither living nor dead. At this point Eliot returns to the “Tristan und Isolde’ opera with the line when translated says: “Desolate and empty is the sea”. This allows this stanza to end with a tone of emptiness and despair just like the ending of the first. Stanza 3: The third stanza of this poem, just like the first two stanzas, has a different narrator who is probably related to someone who fought in the war since they are seeing Madame Sosostris in this stanza for advice. Madame Sosostris is a character from the novel Chrome Yellow by the British author Aldous Huxley which was published in 1921, a year before The Wasteland was published. Also this novel’s setting contains a reference to a house in England where both T.S Eliot and Huxley went to write. Now, Madame Sosostris is a fortune teller and clairvoyant who introduces the use of Tarot cards into the poem. She is introduced that she “has a bad cold” which demonstrates how she is someone who is also plagued by the wasteland. Yet, she does serve to introduce a sense of a mythological atmosphere to the world of the wasteland. During this stanza Sosostris displays the card of the “drowned Phoenician Sailor” that had “pearls that were his eyes” which makes a reference to Shakespeare’s, The Tempest. The allusion is to when the King Alonso has drowned, and is turned into “something rich and strange” and again this reinforces the motif of death. Also the fact that the Sailor’s eyes were pearls associates how beauty used to be prevalent before death and the wasteland appeared due to the war. The next card is “Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks” which has two references. The first being a reference to the actual flower called Belladonna which is used as a poison but also in cosmetics. The second reference is to the Greek mythological creature called the Siren or “the Lady of the Rocks” which lured men to jump off their boats and kill themselves with their song and beauty. These are allusions used by Eliot to show the dangers in beauty which is consistent with his reaction to spring and rebirth in the first stanza. The next cards include “the Wheel”, and “the one-eyed merchant”. Now the Wheel is traditionally a symbol of the cycle of birth and death, and poverty and prosperity and also with the natural cycles in the context of the first stanza that are not occurring in the wasteland. It further suggests that these patterns are found in the rise and fall of civilizations, which in Eliot`s times refers to the rise but present fall of Europe and the Western civilization. Next, the one-eyed merchant could literally mean limited vision or partial sight which suggests that Madame Sosostris cannot actually have foresight within the wasteland since it takes away any relation of happiness or justification. This is seen once again in the next lines when Madame Sosostris is unable to see the next card: ``and this card, which is blank, is something that he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see. I do not find the Hanged Man. `` What Eliot said about his use of the Hanged Man as a Tarot card is that he associates it with the tradition of regeneration through the sacrifice and death of one man, like Jesus in our Christian religion. Since the wasteland is currently sterile and dead, it is implied that our salvation from the wasteland can only be achieved through death and sacrifice. Yet the near-sighted Sosostris cannot find the Hanged Man and therefore Eliot shows how salvation cannot be found within the wasteland we created. The Tarot card reading concludes with: ``Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. `` Now previously water was seen as a precious resource that represents the regeneration of life in the second stanza, yet here the reader is told to fear it. Like in the Love Song where the last lines are: ``till human voices wake us and we drown``. And the crowd of people walking in a ring conveys a sense of alienation or preoccupation since they have no destination when walking in a circle. So, Eliot has shown the theme of futility in modern society once again. Eliot finishes the third stanza by using a more prosaic mode than poetic in order to end quickly and the last line: ``One must be so careful these days`` draws together the sense of anxiety, fear and uncertainty which characterizes this section of the poem and the wasteland. Stanza 4: The final stanza of the Burial of the Dead opens with the two words: ``Unreal City`` which quickly offers a world of ambiguity and fear. Eliot continues by describing the ominous brown fog and the season of winter which hangs over a crowd of people. By using the word ``brown`` Eliot conveys a mundane tone and the word ``winter`` he presents the theme of forgetfulness and death established from the description of winter in the first stanza. Eliot quotes Dante`s inferno in this stanza, like he did in the Love Song, in the lines: ``I had not thought death had undone so many`` and ``Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled``. The first quote refers to the area just outside the Gates of Hell and the repetition of ``so many`` is used to emphasize the disbelief of the destruction that the wasteland and death caused. While the second quote from Dante`s inferno refers to Limbo, which is the first circle of Hell where people go that aren`t Baptized but aren`t condemned to suffer in Hell. This second quote also has a passive tone since people are not referred to as sighing, it`s just that ``sighs were exhaled``, this gives a sense of depersonalization to this stanza. Eliot uses his knowledge of London`s geography, the city he lived in when he wrote The Wasteland, to describe it as a dead city where the only sound to be heard is ``dead``. Then, suddenly the narrator recognizes someone in the huge crowd of dead people whose name is ``Stetson`` and he refers to this unknown person as a soldier who fought with the narrator at ``Mylae``. Now Mylae does not refer to a battle during the First World War but rather a battle during the first Punic War. This dislocation of time and space is disorienting and confusing and could be referring to the confusion in people caused by the First World War; but this line does set up the gruesome questions later asked by the narrator. ``That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout' `` is the first question and it clearly shows the association of death and life motif from the first stanza since you usually don`t plant a corpse or a dead thing. The narrator continues to ask questions of the corpse about whether it has begun to grow or if the winter has stopped it growth which shows a quest for meaning behind the slaughter of WW1. Also, the character named Stetson doesn`t respond since dead people don`t usually answer your questions but it is displaying the ultimate futility in death. The final three lines are ambiguous and many critics have chosen different meanings of these lines in Eliot`s mysterious poem, especially the final line where Eliot accuses the reader of being a hypocrite and is speaking of our, and his, involvement in bringing about the lethargy and emptiness of the Wasteland. I believe this implies a need for sympathy rather than condemnation since he is speaking the truth. We feel depressing when we read this poem about a Wasteland in our own society yet we are the ones that created it and are contributing to it, therefore we are hypocrites. However, we are all human and our human nature only allows us to ultimately look after ourselves, therefore we are all the same and brothers to each other. Yet, does anyone else have any opinions about the meaning of these last lines.