When TS Eliot wrote The Waste Land in 1922, he was a self-proclaimed atheist. About six years later, he described himself as a follower of Anglo-Catholic Christianity and thus wrote the Four Quartets. As it is possible to postulate, some scholars believe that there is an innate Christianity to The Waste Land and have therefore attempted to speculate and interpret the text in such a style. However, achieving this would require taking two dramatic steps. First, Christian poetry must be defined as a genre, and second, the poem must be interpreted according to this first principle of genre definition. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In Western literary interpretation, there has always been a connotation of Christian ethics. Since Christianity has dominated most of Anglo-Saxon culture, there must exist in any interpretation of Western literature the assumption of a Christian context among the audience. Applying this concept to the genre, particularly here to Christian poetry, it is plausible to speculate that atheist poetry is in its own sense "Christian" insofar as it is a response to a first principle, namely that of context. Christian. An analogy to illustrate: Aristotle wrote his philosophical treatises in response to Platonism. Taking Plato's principles as initial hypotheses, Aristotle argued for another type of philosophical worldview, contrary to Platonic theses; however, he still remained entangled in the context of the omnipresence of the Platonic hypothesis when defining his own philosophy. “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato,” said the British philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (“Alfred North Whitehead”). This same parallel can be applied to define Christian poetry in the Western literary tradition. That is, the omnipresence of Christianity in Western culture assumes that any form of outburst against it in itself (to steal an Aristotelian term) is inherently Christian due to the nature of Christianity being a given type in culture. Therefore, this allowance gives critics the opportunity to interpret The Waste Land as a form of Christian poetry. As The Waste Land is an extremely complex work, any singularly focused interpretation does not do justice to the work as a whole. Therefore, "The Burial of the Dead", which seems to convey one of the most important anti-Christian sentiments, will be the sole focus of this interpretation. Eliot alludes to a virtual litany of biblical passages and other canonical works in this section of the play. However, in light of the modernist theme of dissatisfaction with the Western world, which Eliot defends not only by denigrating religion, but also sexuality and materialism, The Waste Land does not lend itself to being seen as a piece of pro-Christian literature. (especially in the Protestant sense of Weber's work ethic). On the contrary, its allusions tend to sully the sacred character of a religion so widely advocated in the West. Through carefully and intelligently crafted authorial commentary as well as the use of an extended metaphor (that of vegetation), Eliot manages to create a work that can be read as anti-Christian literature, which would still classify her as Christian in the sense described above. .“April is the cruelest month…” thus begins “The Burial of the Dead” (Eliot line 1), makingallusion to the general prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which the pilgrims begin their journey in April, the time of "gentle showers...[which] there generate and engender the flowers" (Chaucer lines 3-4). Compare this to Eliot's vision of April, "...breeding/lilacs out of the dead earth..." and "...stirring/dull roots with the spring rain..." and it becomes painfully obvious that this pilgrimage of April to Eliot is not the happiest sometimes (Eliot lines 2,4). This new pilgrimage to which Eliot alludes can be seen as a satirical opposition to Chaucer's search for religious comfort in a pilgrimage out of religious duty. The second stanza introduces Eliot's authorial voice and intensive religious commentary and biblical allusions. What are the roots that cling? , what branches grow out of this stony rubble? Son of man, you cannot tell or guess, for you only know a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the stone dry no sound of water. Only There is a shadow under this red rock, (Step under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your morning shadow walking behind you Or your evening shadow rising to meet you ; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (Eliot lines 19-30) The first step in penetrating this complex passage is to identify the multiple allusions. Then, once the source material is established, one can analyze the cohesion of the passage and see how the allusions fit together to form an overall meaning. The root and branch metaphor has two possible origins, both applicable to the figure of Christ. “I am the true vine and my Father the gardener. He has cut off every branch in me that does not bear fruit” (Holy Bible, John 15:1-2). This passage offers a possible origin of the metaphor while the Parable of the Sower which tells of the seeds scattered on different types of soil, some taking root and others not, explains the images of stony waste that Eliot uses (Holy Bible, Luke 8:5). -15). There is thus a synthesis of the biblical allusions used to set up the rest of the satire of the passage. Eliot then addresses directly the "Son of Man", a common title given to Christ in the New Testament, and accuses him of not being able to answer the question. The flow of “broken images” lends itself to being interpreted as a transition to the broken images that Eliot next presents. The featureless crickets, the red rock casting a shadow and the waterless rock are once again synthesized biblical allusions referring to Christ. In Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, the author speaks of a time when the locust (cricket) crawls on the ground and desire is no longer apparent among the people; the chapter taken as a whole seems to describe the modernist mentality where “…everything has no meaning” (Holy Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:5,8). The shadow of the red rock is taken from a passage in Isaiah chapter 32, which tells of the coming of a kingdom of righteousness where men will be like "shadows of great rocks in thirsty countries" and "streams of water in the desert” (Holy Bible, Isaiah 32:2). Finally, the water in the dry stone image comes from Exodus where Moses is told to strike a rock and water will come out for the people to drink (Holy Bible, Exodus 17:6). Eliot then asks the Son of Man to stand under this shadow created by the rock and uses a non-biblical allusion, a metaphor for aging first seen in the riddle of the Sphinx of Greek mythology, in the morning, the 'afternoon and evening being the equivalent of a young, middle-aged. aged and old (Loy). Once again, Eliot addressesdirectly to the Son of Man using the second person possessive pronoun "Your" referring to the shadow of Christ in the morning and evening (i.e. the birth of Christianity and the Christianity of Eliot era). This setup leads to Eliot's oft-quoted line: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", where dust is a commonly used metaphor to imply uselessness and rottenness (Eliot line 30). Now having the origins of the allusions and interpretations of the metaphors, one can explain in more detail the structure of these in the passage and derive some sort of coherent meaning in the juxtaposition of such phrases. Eliot opens his second stanza with a rhetorical question, wondering about roots and branches, obvious biblical allusions. Then by directly addressing the son of man and accusing him of not being able to realize these roots lost in stony waste, Eliot creates a denigration of the authority of the figure of Christ in the modernist world. By stating that there is no water from dry rocks (as God promised in Exodus) and that crickets offer no comfort, Eliot further highlights the empty promises of religion so often felt in its post-World War I social landscape. Concluding his stanza by asking the Son of Man to come under the shadow of this rock and promising to show him something different from his "shadow" (religion) in different periods of Christian history, Eliot manages to eloquently ridiculing Christianity as totally useless and dead. pretending that it is only a handful of dust, useless but which still inspires fear in so many unthinking people. After a satire on the concept of love, Eliot moves again to authorial commentary presenting Madame Sosostris as the technology to propagate his anti-Christian sentiment. The cards themselves carry a strong connotation of Christian references. The Phoenician sailor with pearls that were his eyes (Eliot lines 47-48), the one-eyed merchant with something empty on his back (Eliot lines 52-53), the man with three sticks, the absence of the Hanged Man ( Eliot lines 51, 54-55), all can be interpreted as alluding to a Christian ideal. The Phoenician sailor, or fishing king, echoes a biblical passage from Matthew chapter four where Jesus asks Simon and Peter, the two brothers, to come and be “fishers of men” (Holy Bible, Matthew 4 : 18-19). An interjection must be made here to clarify how Christ fits into the title Fisher King given to him by Eliot. By asking Simon and Peter to come and help him in his ministry, Christ implies that he is also a fisher of men, which explains the “fisherman” part of the Fisher King. The King part comes from the title given to Christ at the time of his crucifixion, “King of the Jews”. Delving further into the Christ implications, Eliot makes the parenthetical comment that “Pearls were his eyes…”, alluding to the parable of the Pearl of Great Price. Found in the book of Matthew, this tale equates the value of the kingdom of heaven to a pearl found by a merchant. The merchant saves all his money and buys the pearl, which makes him richer than before (Holy Bible, Matthew 13:45-46). Here, by using the past tense verb “were,” the pearls are meant to be in a state of lost value. Thus, the kingdom of heaven spoken of in the parable no longer exists, at least in Eliot's mind according to this passage from the poem. The one-eyed merchant carries something on his back, evoking images of the rood screen or cross that a servant carries. for Christ until his crucifixion. Eliot calls it something empty, something that is forbidden to>