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     T. S. Eliot’s landmark modernist poem The Waste Land was published in 1922. Divided into five sections, the poem explores life in London in the aftermath of the First World War, although its various landscapes include the desert and the ocean as well as the bustling metropolis. The poem is notable for its unusual style, which fuses different poetic forms and traditions. Eliot also alludes to numerous works of literature including the Bible, Shakespeare, St Augustine, Hindu and Buddhist sacred texts, as well as French poetry, Wagnerian opera, and Arthurian legend surrounding the Holy Grail. But the poem is also strikingly modern in its references.

Eliot organized The Waste Land into five distinct sections, each of which bears its own title:

     1.    “The Burial of the Dead” (lines 1–76)
     2.    “A Game of Chess” (lines 77–172)
     3.    “The Fire Sermon” (lines 173–311)
     4.    “Death by Water” (lines 312–21)
     5.    “What the Thunder Said” (lines 322–433)

      Eliot indicates that he derived “the plan” of the poem from a contemporary work of anthropology that analyzes medieval legends of the Holy Grail. This claim led many early critics to seek out a meaningful sense of wholeness in what otherwise appears to be “a heap of broken images” (Eliot 22). However, more recent scholars have closely analyzed the poem’s compositional process, and they have concluded that, contrary to his statement, Eliot didn’t write the poem to a predetermined “plan.” Instead, the poem’s five-part structure emerged as a part of the process of composition, much like a collage slowly emerges as various bits and pieces are made to fit together. The structure of the poem results primarily from Eliot’s strategies of fragmentation and juxtaposition. He uses these strategies to reflect an overarching sense that modern life is unfolding in the shattered ruins of civilization. (Sparknotes)

Major Themes

The Barrenness of Modern Life

      The Waste Land offers a profound reflection on the barrenness of modern life. In Eliot’s imagining, World War I had damaged Western civilization, reducing it to a smoking ruin. This damage shattered the cultural and aesthetic inheritances of the Western tradition and effectively halted social and economic development. The result was a metaphorical barrenness that affected all levels of life and culture. Eliot represents this barrenness most centrally through the well-known figure of the Fisher King. According to Arthurian legend, the Fisher King comes last in a long line of British kings charged with the responsibility of guarding the Holy Grail. As Britain’s protector, he is also the symbolic embodiment of its land. However, the Fisher King has sustained a sexual wound that makes him impotent and renders his entire kingdom barren. In Eliot’s hands, he becomes the poster child for modernity’s impotence. (Sparknotes)

The Failure of Language to Communicate Properly

       In a world shattered by political violence, institutional collapse, and ideological instability, language loses its capacity to communicate as it once did. Eliot reflects on the failure of language to communicate properly in several ways. Perhaps the most straightforward example occurs in “A Game of Chess,” when the anonymous wealthy woman pleads with her lover to tell her what he’s thinking (Eliot 111–14).

       Language also fails to communicate properly because it has become too multiple. This abundance results in part from Eliot’s use of hundreds of references and quotations from a plurality of literary, historical, and religious contexts. The poem’s multiplicity also results from the way it speaks in different languages. For one thing, the poem features numerous speakers, though because the distinctions between them aren’t always clear, it’s not always obvious who is communicating what to whom. For another thing, the poem literally communicates in a range of different languages, including English, Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and Sanskrit. (Sparknotes)

The Irreversibility of Decline

     Eliot’s vision in The Waste Land reflects a world in irreversible decline. References to death and dying are frequent in the poem, starting with the title of the first section, “The Burial of the Dead,” which relates to the burial rites of the Anglican Church. The poem also features numerous images of bones, and the fourth section, “Death by Water,” focuses on a drowned sailor. There are also many oblique allusions to death, dying, and even suicide.

The Torment and Comfort of Memory

      The work of memory is central to The Waste Land, and it involves equal measures of torment and comfort. Eliot indicates as much in the poem’s opening lines, where April “mix[es] / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain” (Eliot 2–4). Here, the speaker sets up an opposition between memory and desire: memory is associated with the past, and desire with the future. Yet memory and desire are further linked, respectively, with “dull roots” and “spring rain.”

      For a poet like Eliot, the work of memory inevitably relates to literary and cultural tradition. Here, too, memory is both a torment and a comfort. For many, the First World War threw the authority of cultural and political institutions into question, effectively shattering the traditions that had previously felt so sustaining.