Theme Of Sterility In Poem The Wasteland English Literature Essay

Theme Of asepsis In Poem The raving madland English Literature EssayThe use Land was premier published in October 1922 in a pickup called The Criterion. The magazine was edited by Elliot himself in England till he closed in(p) it in 1939 on the eve of Second land War (Bloom p.19). A few weeks later the numbers was published in America in a magazine called The Dial. Eliot began throw on the waste land un azoic 1919 exclusively much of the work was done in late 1921 as he was staying on the coast of Margate in England and later on at a sanitarium in Luassanne, Switzerland where he was taking a rest after suffering a nervous breakdown as a closure of his fathers death in 1919. On two cause Eliot passed th unruly Paris, on the panache to Luasanne and on the sort back to capital of the United Kingdom. On the two occasions Elliot and his wife stayed with his friend Ezra Pound and his wife. Ezra Pound looked at Elliots work on both occasions and edited it, cutting extraneous half of it.The Waste Land combines overwhelming erudition of debased pitch (Bloom p.20). Quotations from otherwise languages from great literatures of the world and from pop songs and music hall ar woven into one fabric making it possibly the greatest work of literature of the twentieth century. This verse form can be said to be Elliots greatest work of literature.All through the five cryptic segment sections of The Waste Land, confront the problem sterility and at the end tries to notch a solution, though of little help. In the poem Eliot asks a doubtfulness what branches grow out of this flint rubbish. by dint of this imagery, branches and stony rubbish Eliot suggests that the poem examines the lives of people (branches) and the culture (stony rubbish) in which people live. The lives of people atomic number 18 interlink to their culture. Like the ground where trees draw their life, the culture is a life pour of people. Branches can never grow if the roots cannot clutch if the soil is stony rubbish. The same way people cannot live sound if their culture is broken, rough and can longer support them. It is similarly impossible to bring active a civilization worthy of mankind or better fabricate mankind wholesome and create a worthy culture, if the environment in which the mankind grows undermines life instead of nurturing life (Blossom p.26).The Fire SermonThe scrap of this passage is paying backn from a Buddha sermon given to Buddha followers. It urges them to give up terrestrial rages symbolized by fire and instead look for freedom from earthly things. A turn away from the earthly actually occurs in this passage. series of debased cozy group meetings are depicted and finally closes with a river-song and apparitional conjuration. The passage opens with a desolate riverside scene. The talker is surrounded by rats and garbage as he fishes and muses on the king my brothers wreck.Through this comment the poet is up to(p) to develop the th eme of sterility. Unlike the desert that is characterized by bareness, the riverside that should be full of rejuvenation of life just but a dull canal that only rats a seen moving around. This shows the pessimism because what is hoped to bring approximately regeneration of the people only rats are found there. As the speaker muses in the king my brothers wreck, with the king my fathers grave before him, he thinks near the death of kings that leads to loss of significance of life. The sound of rats rattle personifies the lethal governing body ruining the gentle spirit.London according to Elliot had become so vain in the sense that the dwellers of the city have lost touch with fundamental reality of olden pulse of germ and birth. Eliot shows sterility in a hetero rouseual encounter in London. The speaker is invited by a one-eyed merchant of Madame Sosostrilss tarot pack, Mr. Eugenides, to a meeting place for homosexual assignations. In this situation the speaker proclaims himse lf as Tiresias. Tiresias is an ancient mythology who possesses both male and egg-producing(prenominal) reproductive organs, old man with wrinkled female breasts. He is overly able to see into the future. The speaker in this encounter as utilise by Eliot is only an observer of the flatts of this encounter as they unfold. The speaker witnesses an encounter betwixt a typist and a small house agents clerk. After a long day of work, the typist returns to her house and prepares dinner. Her underwear is seen drying on the windowsill, and the divan on which she sleeps is strewn with other lingerie such as a stockings. A infantile man, a small house agents clerks, who is described as having a absolute stare, arrives in the typists house. On eating dinner, the young man starts making advances towards the typist which she does not resist. She readily gives in and they are involved in a sexual intercourse which the speaker sees as an alienated sexual exchange. After they are done the you ng man walks out of the house finding his way through the dark. This signifies the state of moral and vital darkness that he lives in. The typist on the other hand, adjusts her hair and says to herself glad its over. This sexual encounter symbolizes the degradation of the rudimentary model of love and rankness. It was neither an act of procreation, nor a rite performed ceremoniously for a fertile earth. There was not even an expression of love. The sexual encounter is a conceited assertion of destitute self on the case of the clerk and an example of accustomed submission on the start up of the typist. Sexual intercourse has been turned mechanical just like how machines work.The poem therefore represents the narrators consciousness of his anguish in relation to history, culture and even time. Throughout the poem infertility is felt with little hopes of the future. What the speaker sees in this encounter is one of the highest examples of barrenness, egotism and disaffection.A Gam e of ChessThe patronage of this section is derived from two plays by an early 17th century dramatist Thomas Middleton the one in which the moves in a game of chess denotes stages in seduction. Two opposing scenes are depicted. iodine of the beau monde and the other of lower social class. The firstly part of the section exposes a wealthy, well groomed muliebrity surrounded by recherch furnishings. The woman waits for a caramel and in the process her neurotic ideas become frenzied with no meaningful cries. Her day then climaxes with plans for an outing and a game of chess.In the morsel part of this episode depicts a scene in a London barroom. Here two women discuss a third woman who is not in the barroom. As the bar is about to be closed, one of the women recounts a discourse with their friend Lil. Lils husband had been dismissed from the army. Lil has refused to get herself false odontiasis and she is told that her husband will seek the comp either of another woman as a resul t. Lils husband does not seem to appreciate her even on bearing five children for him which has led to incumbent appearance. The narrator says that her husband custom leave her alone.The two women, Lil wealthy woman, represent the two sides of modern sexuality. One side of the sexuality is dry, barren interchange inseparable from neuroticism and self-destruction. Eliot likens this woman to Cleopatra in the manner of her luxuriance of language and surrounding. She is defeated, excessively emotional but lacks intellects. Eliots association of this woman with Cleopatra, who committed suicide due to frustration stem from love, shows her irrationality. However, unlike Cleopatra, this woman is not and will never be a cultural standard.Lil on the other hand represents sexuality as fertility associated with a deficiency of culture and speedy aging. Despite doing everything right married right, supported her husband, bore him children, yet her body lets her down. She no longer looks li keable to her husband. Age had already set in and there was no way to reverse it, not even false teeth. This shows how possibility of regenerating sex both at the cultural and personal contexts diminishes further.The Burial of the DeadThis is the first passage of the waste land. Eliot derived the title of this passage from a line in the Anglican burial service. It is constituted of four sketches, apparently from different speakers. The first is an autobiographical snipping from a childhood of an aristocratical woman called Marie. She tells the poet as they take coffee of her past in Austria and of her cousin, who was the Archduke Rudolph and the heir to be of the Austro-Hungarian throne. She also narrates to the poet in fondness how she used to go sledging in the mountains and sometimes Archduke would take her sledging. Marie mingles a meditation on the seasons with comments on the desolate state of her current being. She says I read, much of the shadow, and go south in the winter. Marie claims to be a German and not a Russian. She is a member of the lately defeated Austrian royal family. The poem being written after the send-off World War it shows how peoples lives were disrupted and left desolate as a result of war. People, like Marie could no longer feel part or even enjoy being part of the social fabric as they did before the war.As the speaker walks through London which is populated by ghosts he faces a figure that he once fought with in a battle and this seems to mix the clashes of the First World War with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Both wars were futile and led to massive destruction. The speaker goes earlier to ask the ghostly figure, Stetson, on the fate of a corpse launch in his garden. At the time Eliot was writing the poem, he had started gaining interest in Christianity. It was difficult for him to believe the Christian belief of resurrection. This shows the pessimism with which Eliot looks at degraded human culture of post-worl d war I. This hopelessness is depicted in the character Sibyl, a woman possessing prophetic powers who ages but never dies. This woman looks into the future and finds no hope in it and therefore prefers to die. Eliot sees himself in the same predicament as Sibyl. The culture in which he lives in has decayed and dried-up. The worst part of this culture is that it will not expire, and hence he is compelled to live with memories of its motive glory.Through memory of the dead, a confrontation of the past and the present is created. Through memory, the past and the present are juxtaposed showing how things have worsened and decayed. Maries memories of her childhood are painful. The worlds of her cousin, and coffee in the park, and sledging on the mountains have since been replaced by complex political and emotional consequences of the war. She now prefers to read late into the night because there is not much she can do.In summing up, the poem The Waste Land is Eliots best work of litera ture. Written after the First World War which he describes as futile and cause of massive destruction, Eliot explores changes that occurred after the war. One of these changes involves the culture becoming sterile. Through different passages he has been able to develop this theme of sterility. Sterility is both in the culture and person people. The culture has become so decayed that it can no longer support existence of a wholesome mankind. As a result people have lost touch with their culture and turned to doing unworthy things. Despite the sterility of the culture, human beings are forced to live in this condition. Just like Sibyl who despite seeing no hope in the future only ages and never dies thus forced to continue alive in an already hopeless condition. Like Sibyl, Eliot sees little hope if any for the culture and the people to be regenerated.