The Waste Land

A detailed Summary of The Waste Land


This poem, which is divided into five parts, was exhaustive to read and understand. I had to read over it at least four to five times before I was able to make some sense out of it. The reason that the is so difficult to understand is because it seems to be haphazardly written in a "stream of consciousness." Also, many of the lines are in a different language and there are allusions throughout that I am not at all familiar with. Thus, many of the messages I was unable to understand at all.

The poem, in literal time, covers about 12 hours:

61 Under the brown fog of a winter dawn...

208 Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

220 At the violet hour, the evening hour...

But there seems to be a deeper dimension in the poem that covers the cycle of life: birth, growth, maturity, decay, death, and rebirth. The poem implies that the driving force o


Tiresias, as I remember from the Oedipus trilogy, is a soothsayer that serves as one of the many allusions that are present in the poem (probably the only one that I caught). In the poem, he foretells everything and thus seems to unify the past, present, and future. He appears in the exact middle of the poem (a climax of the plot, perhaps?) and serves as the central character, seeing everything that is happening amongst him. I think he is the third person mentioned in the fifth part ("Who is the third person that always walks beside you?" on line 359). His existence reiterates that sense of timelessness that contrasts the literal, chronological time.

f all life on earth is procreation and rebirth. However, this poem portrays a wasteland that lacks this fertility and sexual potency. Because of this, the earth is so wasted it cannot produce life anymore. This lack of sexual pot

Some common words found in the essay are:
TS Eliot, brown fog, third person, brown fog winter, fog winter, sexual potency, life anymore, rebirth poem,

Approximate Word count = 601
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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