TS Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land is widely considered the most influential work of the 20th century. Made up of five fascinating parts, Eliot's brilliant work forms a complex collage of modern society. Many scholars view The Waste Land as Eliot expressing his fear and terror about the fate of humanity and culture. Modernists like Eliot tend to focus on the decline of Western culture and idealize the beauty that their culture once possessed. The world depicted in The Waste Land is full of human isolation and skepticism, similar to the everyday world in which Eliot lived and observed after the First World War. Although The Waste Land centers on negative images and the general theme of death, Eliot did not mean the work to be hopeless. Among all the negativity that occurs in society, The Waste Land Eliot focuses heavily on the theme of rebirth and resurrection. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIn the aftermath of the devastation of World War I, Eliot saw hope in society, for after death and desolation can only come rebirth and positivity. The First World War was the turning point from the old world to the new world, the end of the Victorian era, and its consequences still affect modern society today. In 1914, millions of people marched against each other in large groups, as they usually did in the Victorian era, but they faced great devastation due to all the technological advancements. What everyone thought would be a quick war that would drag on for years. Modern technological advances such as barbed wire, machine guns, submarines, chemical warfare, tanks, planes and flamethrowers were things armies had never seen and certainly had not expected. never prepared. The results of World War I were staggering; nearly an entire generation was killed in combat, leaving those at home clinging to their mortality and having to pick up the pieces of their shattered existence. Eliot saw what World War I did to those around him and how modern society was in its worst state and in need of saving. A direct product of this is his brilliant work accurately chronicling the chaos of the times: The Waste Land. After the devastation of World War I, Eliot also experienced a kind of devastation in his personal life. According to Fatima Falih Ahmed and Moayad Alshara Ahmad in their scholarly article, “Rejuvenation in TS Eliot's The Waste Land,” Eliot was “at a standstill in his writing career at this point. He had trouble thinking of things to write about and was afraid he would never come up with another good idea again. (Ahmad and Ahmed 164). So, alongside the impact and widespread death of the First World War, Eliot had also experienced a death within himself, inside his brain. In a sense, writing The Waste Land was not only an act of catharsis for him, due to the rebirth and awakening of ideas and passions, but it also became a defining poem for his generation. In The Waste Land, rebirth and resurrection do not come easily, they can only come from hardship, negativity and death – which post-WWI society experienced to the extreme. The post-World War I world placed society in an era of “depression, loss, and premature death.” (Ahmad andAhmed 160). Throughout the work, there are many allusions to death and destruction, such as the overall dead, waterless and rocky terrain, incapable of sparking growth or rebirth. Almost everything in this poem is sad and dead: “People miss things that are past or finished. They are also indifferent to what happens to them. The images and seasons are dark, cruel and desolate. (161). Or we can look to the many desolate characters who lead terrible lives and meet an untimely demise, such as Phlebas, the vain Phoenician sailor, the tragic Philomel, or any of the anonymous people described who essentially died at the 'inner and lead scandalous and scandalous activities.lives without passion. However, death and life can be easily confused – although death is negative and devastating, "death can give birth to life, and life in turn necessitates death." (162). As Archana Parashar explores in her scholarly article, “Reverberations of the Environmental Crisis and Its Relevance in Sustainability Management: An Ecocritical Reading of TS Eliot's the Waste Land,” the wasteland that could be classified as Europe and modern civilization as a whole means “loss of morals, values ​​and environmental degradation in the modern world”. (Parashar). On the one hand, The Waste Land becomes "a reflection of individual despair, but also a panoramic view of the total spiritual downfall that has engulfed the modern world...it is expressionless, aggressive and full of escapist resentment." » (Ahmad and Ahmed 160). An example of the spiritual fall that Eliot saw in his modern world would be that of Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor. Phlebas was proud, arrogant and conceited and he is now dead, floating alone at the bottom of the sea. Eliot uses Phlebas as a parable or cautionary tale to recall his own mortality, stating: "Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and great like you. » (Eliot, line 321). By killing Phlebas of his modernist sins and reborn him to nature, Eliot humiliates the character and gives him a fresh start. Another important anecdote that Eliot uses to illustrate the spiritual fall of society and the necessary rebirth is the rape and transformation of the tragic Philomel. . The rape of Philomel in Greek mythology and in Ovid’s epic Metamorphoses was “so grossly forced; yet there the nightingale/ Filled all the desert with an inviolable voice/ And still she cried, and still the world chases,/ 'Jug Jug' to dirty ears. (100-103). By juxtaposing this myth with what is happening in his modern society, Eliot provides unique insight into the act of rebirth and creation. Here, the act of creation is not desired by Philomel, but willed and taken by the “barbarian king” (99). Philomel can be seen as a symbol of the desert that Eliot envisions, the modern world; as it were, he is full of potential but incapable of creating anything worthwhile, incapable of substantial rebirth. Philomel's story can be interpreted in the sense that what the modern world needs is a change and a renaissance must be imposed on it, whether they like it or not, that is what is necessary for survival and subsequent creation. Furthermore, the anecdote can also be seen as a commentary on the fact that sex is unromantic and biased as a feature of modern society, and therefore nothing of value can be created from these actions. Although the theme of rebirth and resurrection can be traced. In the five sections of The Waste Land, the first section “The Burial of the Dead” begins the poem with a clear picture of the theme. BothThe first lines of the poem are undoubtedly the most memorable: April is the cruelest month, giving birth to lilacs on the dead earth, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. (1-4) From the first lines of the poem, Eliot initially establishes this theme of death, rebirth, and resurrection that predominates throughout the rest of the poem. The month of April is generally considered positive, hopeful, re-creative and life-giving, however, the way Eliot frames it is an inversion of its usual connotation. Regeneration is “painful, because it brings back reminders of a more fertile and happy past.” (Parashar). This means that everyone who is still alive after the First World War sees the shadows of their much happier pre-World War I past hanging over them: they have lived in desolation and despair for so long that they cannot now live only for the vanished glories of their past, without any hope of the future. Thomas Michael LeCarner, author of the scholarly article "TS Eliot, Dharma Bum: Buddhist Lessons in The Waste Land" argues that Avril, being paradoxically characterized as cruel, suggests "that the process of rebirth and renewal is a source of pain and cruelty. (LeCarner) therefore reaffirms the idea that modern society is stuck in its monotonous habits – unable to be reborn. However, the spring rains shown in the quote above also indicate a healing process, such as a rebuilding of society after its collapse following the First World War. In addition to April, which would be classified as the season of spring, Eliot also alludes to winter and summer in the same stanza – all seasons except autumn. Here, the different seasons seem to be a symbol of the human condition. In the same way that April was paradoxically classified as desolate, Eliot's description of winter is: "Winter kept us warm, covering the Earth with forgetful snow" (Eliot 5-6 ). , its description of winter deviates from the normal connotations of frigidity and misery. Winter seems to have a comforting effect, the snow covers the painful memories of the past and, generally speaking, from the death of winter comes spring and new life, so that there is "healing and happiness , pain must first occur.” (Ahmad and Ahmed 159). And then, following the pain and struggle of other seasons, comes summer. In the first stanza of The Waste Land, out of all the seasons, summer seems to be the ideal, summer is “the result of the pain and healing process that spring brings about in people. Eliot suggests in his poem that the world can overcome hardship and barrenness. (163). Eliot does not include the season of autumn because it is the result of the end of summer, the end of happy and carefree days, for Eliot and The Waste Land autumn is the most undesirable, it marks the beginning of a struggle, the beginning of difficult times, perhaps even death. Although society was at a standstill after World War I, Eliot ultimately believed that there was hope for everyone to come together and get through hard times, which was optimistic for a modernist like him.[1 ]. The feeling of hope that Eliot imitates does not correct the modern feeling of despair, but rather calls for a call to regeneration. Throughout the poem, Eliot uses flowers as a symbol of the rebirth and resurrection of society. In the first section, "The Burial of the Dead", Eliot refers to flowers such as lilacs and hyacinths, lilacs come out of the "dead earth" (Eliot 2), meaning that something good can still arise from a bad situation. The hyacinths are given to a mysterious speaker in thesecond stanza, from what seems to be an innocent affair of the heart, the speaker recalls pleasant times that passed south: -- Yet when we returned late from the hyacinth garden, Your arms full and your hair wet, I couldn't speak, and my eyes were failing, I was neither alive nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light, of silence. (37-41) Given the context of the poem and the time in which it was written, one can imagine that World War I tore the mysterious speaker from her beloved, both men were torn one from the other and the speaker was forced to romanticize hyacinths. To her, hyacinths represent the world untouched by peril and war, and because hyacinths can always grow back, then perhaps for her and everyone else, this state of mind can eventually be reborn as well. In the fourth stanza of “The Burial of the Dead,” another unnamed mysterious speaker asks the morbid question: “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,/Has it begun to sprout?” Will it flower this year? (71-72). Although gloomy, these dark questions reinforce the need for regeneration, the necessity of death to create new life. The series of questions, like many aspects of The Waste Land, dates back to the First World War. Here, people attempt to search for answers to the essentially meaningless massacre of the First World War. Throughout the poem, water goes hand in hand with the theme of rebirth and resurrection. Eliot constantly refers to water; Water can be traced in almost every stanza in every part of the poem. Water imagery appears through the cleansing rain, the "Sweet Thames" (176) flowing through immoral, modern London, and nautical imagery. Eliot, "constantly uses lack of water in connection with infertility, which gives us the feeling that the modern world cannot produce anything new or beautiful." (Ahmad and Ahmed). In Eliot's wasteland world there is a desperate need for water, the land is in drought, which is an absence of water and therefore a symbol of death. There seems to be a repetition and juxtaposition of dryness and humidity: Here there is no water but only rock Rock and no water... If there was water And not of rock If there were rock And also water And water (Eliot 331-349) This quote, which is found towards the end of the poem, illustrates the despair due to the lack of water, to the point that the speaker seems hysterical - it's a comment on the terrible situation of modern society and how it is so in need of a rebirth. The "world that Eliot describes in his poem is supposed to be one in which faith in divinely ordained events and in a rationally organized universe has been totally lost" (Ahmad and Ahmed 160), which ultimately explains why how desperate the speaker is to be reborn. Although lack of water is a major problem in the wastelands, Eliot also warns readers against overwatering. In the third stanza, the famous seer Madame Sosostris warns the speaker to “fear death by water” (Eliot 55). The phrase “Death by Water” resurfaces in the fourth part of the poem, when Eliot tells the parable of the drowning of Phlebas the Phoenician. What Eliot is trying to say about water is that it is necessary for rebirth; However, too much water can also be dangerous: too much has led to the downfall of modern society and it will not help repair it. The Waste Land is riddled with allusions to religion and knowledge regarding the theme of the afterlife and rebirth. Eliot's poem is filled to the brim with "literary allusions,..