The Waste Land: An Analysis

Seeing as we are beginning the study of the WASTE LAND next class, I thought it would be fitting to put up my two cents. Here's my analysis: (Some references used in this analysis are noted in depth at the bottom, writers Hugh Kenner, Roland Barthes, Elizabeth Drew, and my wonderful literature professor, Marie-Christine Leps, and my creative writing professor, Dr. Uppal, who took the time to have a long conversation with me today about Eliot and writing.)

It just so happens that my assigned reading for my creative writing class this week was "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Convenient, eh? In class discussion, we thoroughly discussed Eliot's views on literature and writing. Above all what I took out of it was Eliot's firm view that writers must read. My creative writing professor stressed that to Eliot (and in general) one that seems to write in an immature or perhaps underdeveloped way if often one who does not read enough. To Eliot, writing is a response, to history, to time, to other writers.
It is as a dialogue is, it is a building and contrasting of ideas (perhaps a bit Hegelian here) that is built upon, but if we must contrast, we must do so as a mature writer: 'Amateur writers imitate, mature writers steal'. They reference. They combine. They take the old and make it new. But we must know to old quite well in order to do so, or else we're just writing fiction.

One line in particular that Dr. Uppal pointed out today is when Eliot mentions that 'only those people with personalities know what it is to want to escape from it.' There was a lot of emphasis, here, about escaping from the personality of the writer, escaping from the person. Eliot beleives that authorship, essentially, is crap. Those who attempt to dissemble and explain poetry by investigating the author's life are going about the business wrong, as is one who believes that by knowing all there is to know about that writers lifetime will make them explicable. The writer is not the 'person', and while they still certainly receive credit for what they do, the writer is a mind and the poems are the words on the page. Alienation- the writer, Eliot himself, is alienated from his own work. While he maintains a firm evocative voice (the emotional and feeling-oriented voice he also speaks of in his essay), the voice is not tied to him, cannot be explained by one who knew him. He is not the context, there is no context in the Waste Land. In fact, not only is Eliot alienated from his own work, but so is the audience, so is time and space and straight narration, so is form alienated. It is a timeless work that demonstrates the chaos of Eliots time with form but bears no necessary resemblance to Eliot or to his time. The alienation is worthy of investigation, because I myself have not before read something like it and, it creates the STRONG effect that the Waste Land is so famous for. Who knew that detachment from sentimental experience could make the experience, could build the sentiment, could be so strong?

Eliot’s transitions between speakers alienate the author. The fragmented psyche he creates implies one that is not united yet somehow cohesive. This shows the many narrators, and with so many with so much to say, there is no one in charge (Kenner 149). There is no author, as Eliot removes himself completely from his text, and is completely out of context. Barthes would describe this power, "the text is…a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash (Barthes 2)." The meanings of the passages mean something in context of one another. However the trick with Eliot’s work is that although he creates a sense of alienation between himself and the writing, he empowers the meaning of the text. The intertextuality he uses is purposeful, as he documents his sources, with footnotes, at the end of the poem (Drew 58). Passages combine otherwise segregated and contextual meanings into one, blending history and culture into one undefined universal message (ibid.). Multiple speakers come in also as third parties, for example, in "A Game of Chess," the line "hurry up please its time" repeatedly interjects a two-way dialogue. It pushes the reader and the author outside of the text, alienating them from it.

In Eliot’s work, there is no sense of time. The text is alienated from particular historical or temporal context. He changes the concept of time to one that is constant, not continuous or unfolding (Drew 158). The work begins with a description of the rebirth of the springtime. It describes the transition between seasons that blur together, setting the stage for the temporal cohesion of events in the poem (Drew 68): "April is the cruelest month…winter kept us warm…summer surprised us…" The rest of the text switches between biblical times and descriptions of the modern industrial scenery. He alludes to historical texts, Shakespeare and the ancient literatures. These changes of landscape are used as defamiliarization techniques, making strong reference to time without actually mentioning it (ibid.). This creates no particular time in which the text is situated. As long as the publishing date of the text is ignored, the reader is alienated from exact time (Drew 64). There is, as well, no sense that time is being looked back upon; the reader may be anywhere in time, or even switching back and forth (ibid.). The disconnection of phrasing in the text mirrors this intellectual alienation (ibid.). Eliot "makes times new" in this way, and uses phrasing to further disconnect words and time. Eliot, the Poet of Disconnection, is obsessed with making things new, mixing symbols and ideas, confusing lines like he confuses time; to make it both temporally and structurally innovative (Leps Jan. 6). Almost as if saying to the reader, "You are barely beginning to understand this." He makes ideas new by putting them where they are consciously not usually considered, and makes time new by relating it to life unconventionally, to make a point. He puts emphasis in phrasing where it is not usually placed: "What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door."

A third way The WasteLand alienates itself is by its disconnected plot line (Drew 67). It has no particular story to tell, rather, many stories, all contrasting and shaping one another. An example of the defamiliarization Eliot uses in terms of plot:
"They called me the hyacinth girl. And yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, your hair wet and your arms full, I could not speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light, the silence."
Above, Eliot uses a very emotionally charged voice (Leps Jan. 6). The speaker is sentimental. But this changes quickly to a clear-headed tone: "Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant, had a bad cold nevertheless, is known to be the wisest woman in Europe…" And then to "Unreal City, Under the fog of a winter dawn…". Apparent is the clash of tones, ideas, and scenes. He plays games with plot, amplifying its lack of flow by showing their ideas as somehow interconnected. For example, in The Burial of the Dead, he writes, "Fear death by water." This is a referral to the poem itself; section 6, "Death by Water" (Drew 65). The scenes refer to each other, but are not apparently related in structure or conventional plot time. The defamiliarization and connections in plot are meant to confuse and alienate one from conventional understanding (Drew 64). These different events and tones move along a plot that the reader and writer is completely alienated from (ibid.). As it is read, it is completely unknown where it will lead, since it takes no particular direction. It is fair to say only that it builds upon itself: his work refuses plot, but because it has many resemblances to plot laced throughout the text, it fools us into imagining one.

None of The WasteLand has to do with Eliot’s life, he is only a mind and words are just a statement (Leps Jan. 6). The nature and the purpose of his work alienated him.
Outside of context, an experience is just an experience. We can make it, shape it, and watch it go by. And so is time in our lives. We think we are there but we are truly watching a sailboat drift, and all the while saying this is fun, this is emotional, this must have meaning, but there is no meaning here. We are pieces watching and playing a game of chess but if we photographed the game and saw it objectively, truly examining the canon of literature, all we would see are pieces that are just there, ever-changing and complimenting each other in a sphere of breath and nothingness. Only in this point in history, after the Great War, we can console ourselves, we show meaning in futility. We prove that history alone is meaningless, but that we can appreciate that.

Kenner, Hugh. "The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot." Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New
York 1959.
Leps, M.-C. "Modernism and T.S. Eliot." Literature and Theory: An Introduction 1300B.
York University, Toronto. 6 Jan, 2004.
Barthes, Roland. "Death of the Author." 1977.
Drew, Elizabeth. "T.S. Eliot: The Design of his Poetry." Charles Scribner's Sons, U.S.A.
1949.

"And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living."
(Tradition and the Individual Talent)