Sample essay on The Waste Land by TS Eliot
- "Here is no water but only rock" (line 331). Explain the role of water in The Waste Land.
Water symbolism in literature is just as ubiquitous as water itself is in nature. T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is no exception; in the poem, the modern world is portrayed as a dry, decaying desert in desperate need of the rejuvenation of water. Central to the depiction of water in The Waste Land is its ability to take multiple forms. In a poem of fragments, encounters with water are one of the few recurring motifs. Water is the River Thames, spring rains, winter snow, and summer fog. Water constitutes the base of the lavish perfumes that cloud the upper class, and the alcohol that the working class drinks at last call. Water dissolves all boundaries between opposing forces in people and time. It is the adaptability of water that allows Eliot to use it as a literary tool to represent cultural change. Although water symbolism in literature is traditionally associated with ideas of vitality, purity, and controlled flow, Eliot deliberately contrasts these ideas to demonstrate how water can also become a symbol of death, pollution, and loss of control. Ultimately, the role of water in The Waste Land is to act as a channel between these conflicting conceptions in order to highlight a departure from the fertility of past tradition to the barrenness of the modern age.
The Waste Land reminds thåt just as water can act in accordance with its traditional symbolic meaning as a source of life, it also has the potential to inhibit life when it becomes scarce. The poem opens with an image of spring rain in April, and through pathetic fallacy deems it the "cruellest month" for its callous "mixing" of "memory" with "desire," despite its traditionally hopeful connotation (31). The reality is that rebirth in the spring involves the return of both pleasure and old pain. However, in the wasteland, the cruelty of April lies not in the ambivalence of rain's return, but in the absence of any rain at all. Besides, rain would merely
"[stir] / Dull roots" (31). The syntactic parallelism of "breeding," "mixing," and "stirring," combined with enjambment create a false sense of action (31). Life does not breed, mix, or stir
under the dry soils of the wasteland. There is "no water, but only rock"; no "spring" or "pool among the rock" exists to sustain any life (40). The portrayal of physical cycles, namely the arrival or denial of water in the form of rain in greenery and wasteland, metaphorically juxtaposes the vitality of former times with the contemporary vicinity of death.
Eliot uses this notion of physical death by drought of water to represent a cultural death by drought of past fradition and knowledge. Deprived of water, through which they used to be able to "drink" this departed, dead knowledge, the of the wasteland are reduced to "[d]ead mountain mouth[s] of carious teeth" that "cannot stop or think," or perfon•n even the most basic ftmctions to "spit," "stand," "lie," or "sit" (40). The language of the poem becomes deprived too, with short, monosyllabic words syntactically mirroring a loss of knowledge as the speaker fantasizes about water. He eventually descends into deliriousness with incomprehensible onomatopoeia mimicking the falling of rain: "Drip drop drip drop" (40). Yet, the use of rhyme in
"drink"/"think" and "spit"/"sit" gives a glimpse of the structure and tradition the wasteland once had, but now lacks. Thus, the drought represents a large-scale loss of identity in the cultural transition from the past to Eliot's modern present.
Eliot also demonstrates this transition by contrasting the the symbolic purity of water with pollution in urban life through allusions to the River Thames. In former times, the River Thames was a pure, ethereal landscape where a golden age of high culture and sophistication reached its peak. Along the river, Eliot writes of "a clatter and a chatter" of lounging fishermen, the song of a mandolin, and the "[i]nexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold" in the church of Magnus Martyr (38). Detailed imagery leaves the senses enriched by the atmosphere
of society on the riverside, akin to Ionia, the cultural and intellectual cenfre of Classical Greece.
In this sense, purity existed in the past in the union of a common culture, which placed
importance on grace and sociability, the preservation and appreciation of the arts, and spirituality.
Eliot's wasteland represents the contamination of this purity: a disintegration of' cultural
structure and a spiritual sterility, demonstrated once again through the use of the river. A rat has taken the place of "nymphs"/, "dragging its slimy belly" on what has become a "dull canal," polluted by "empty bottles/ . cardboard boxes, cigarette ends," and other debris left by urban dwellers (35-36). The wasteland is just that — a land of waste, polluted and strewn with disposable junk of the modem World. The lone creeping rat, a scavenger that feeds on filth and spreads disease, epitomizes the physical decay of the wasteland, particularly in confrast to
enchanting and desirable nymphs. Aside from the physical pollution of the river, a tainted cultural and spiritual purity is implied in the images of waste. The drinking and smoking presumed to have produced "empty bottles" and "cigarette ends" are indulgent, unproductive activities that represent the modern apathy that has contaminated intellectual and cultural life.
Even the alcohol that used to fill those bottles is an impure solution; worse yet, it represents impurity that is impossible to cleanse has occurred, from a golden age of purity to a dark age of impurity, a drastic fall from the grace of "Sweet Thames," whose beauty has been immortalized in art but clearly not in reality. Eliot uses the conventional symbolism of water as a constant flow of motion to depict this change as well, from a time of self-control to over-indulgence in the modern world. A past characterized by self-control is presented through an image of water controlled by skillful command. The River Thames, once again alluded to in order to demonstrate contrast, transports "Elizabeth and Leicester / Beating oars," who command "[t]he brisk swell," with their ornately decorated "gilded shell') guided only by "[t]he peal of bells" (38). Short, enjambed lines of only a few words at a time are isolated and provide only snapshot memories of this royal, pure age of the Virgin Queen. The mechanized quality of this detached poetic structure mirrors the highly mechanical process of "[bleating oars" against the systematic rolling waves. An image of the j prudence and poise of Elizabeth and her suitor is conveyed through this style, amid the extravagance of their ship and their royalty.
Conversely, the image of Phlebas the drowned Phoenician sailor "[e]ntering the whirlpool" represents a loss of control a kind of cultural drowning in modern indulgences that accompanies the aforementioned drought of fraditional knowledge and spirituality (39). The irony of Phlebas' fate is that Phoenicians were known as expert sailors. That Phlebas "[florgot the cry of gulls," even as a skilled navigator of the sea demonstrates the universality and danger of this loss of knowledge. The conjunctions in "profit and loss," "rose and fell," and "age and youth" in this passage mimic the oscillating waves of the whirlpool that Phlebas is engulfed im Moreover, conjunctions juxtapose opposite pairs of words that contrast the prosperity of the past with the doomed present. In the end, the whirlpool entangles both eras in its vortex and leaves nothing but the stagnant wasteland behind.
Though it seems as though this transformation is irreversible, Eliot puts forth a solution as to how modern society can pull itself out of the wasteland: Datta, being giving, Dayadhvam, having compassion, and most importantly, Damyata, showing restraint (42). To enter once again into an age of vitality, knowledge, and tradition, Eliot instructs that self-control must be regained, like the "controlling hands" to which a boat would respond "[g]aily" (42). Restraint, as opposed to indulgence, is portrayed as a healing, restorative virtue. While Eliot acknowledges that modern society has become a wasteland, he also proposes that taking back control over the flow of water, and in turn the flow of life, can return the wasteland to a golden age.
Just as waterways carry out the function of physical transportation, so too do the various waterways of The Waste Land transport readers between two places, each representing a drastically different time. Transformative water both exposes the shortcomings of the modern world and illuminates the superiority of the past. Without a will to change and the right intentions, modern people will remain cultivating dead land, cleansing with muddy water, and boarding a ship spiralling into a whirlpool. For Eliot, the "right" intentions are Datta,
Dayadhvam, and Damyata, the key to physical, spiritual, and cultural replenishment. Whether or not there is anyone left to share in this enlightenment or to seek out life, clarity, and control in water is yet unknown. Only when the thirst for water is realized shall the wasteland be restored to its former glory.
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