“The
Waste Land” by T.S Eliot describes the barrenness of city life in modern civilization and also gives us an authentic impression of the psychology of educated people in
the psychological stump that took place immediately after World War I. It makes
us aware of the nervous exhaustation, the mental disintegration, the
exaggerated self consciousness, the boredom, the pathetic groping after the
fragments of a shattered faith-all these symptoms of “the psychic disease which
ravaged Europe mercilessly like an
epidemic.” Eliot takes us into the very
heart of the wasteland which was post war Europe
and makes us realize to the full the plight of a whole generation. It vividly
illustrates the complexity and machine like activity of modern man comparing
with the glorious past of spiritual and moral highness.
The
figures who inhabit the unreal city are like the inhabitants of Baudlaire’s Paris. Eliot clearly
points out the aridity of the modern urban civilization.
Besides the modern waste landers consider
April as the cruelest month because they have no desire for re-birth and
spiritual life.
The
dead-routine of the office goers shows the futility and the emptiness of
civilization. The city-dwellers have no faith in any religion. The offices and
factories in London
begin at nine which is the time of Christ Crucifixion. In the modern
civilization, the world of commerce is entirely different from the world of
God. In the big city, one will come across the evil of gambling in different
forms. In the poem, Madame So Sostris exemplifies the worldliness and
unspiritual outlook of modern world. She is a society. Under the low, fortune
telling is a criminal and undesirable business. So Madame So Sostris is afraid
of police. (She has a pack of seventy eight ends through which she tells the
fortune of her customer.)
We
may regard “The Wasteland” as an epitome of the “Decade of Despair’, which
followed World War I. The poem aims at presenting to us the various
cross-current, emotional, intellectual and psychological which together
contributed to the general atmosphere of that unhappy period. In the past the
source of inspiration for life and achievement was faith. But values have bee
changes now-a-days. Spiritually the people all over the world have become
barren. In the poem, Eliot shows that the conception of family and of human
relationships is being shattered down day by day. The people of upper class
capacity are suffering from various types of mental illness. The fashionable
society women called the lady of situation are bored with her urban wasteland.
They do not feel comfort in their houses. For example, Mr. Eugenides, modern
businessmen, is fond of home sex, and he fulfills his desire with hotel boys.
Psychologically, the modern people are no satisfied with their getting. They
seemed frustrated. For example, Lil is frustrated because she is a woman of thirty
one ad fails to fascinate her husband who wants to enjoy life. Similarly, the
fashionable society woman, the lady of Situation is bored with her own life.
The
Waste Land is timeless; it is valid for all
ages. It deals with a universal dilemma. The theme of the poem is the spiritual
emptiness, the unemotional sociality and the general aimlessness which have
characterized all periods of history. In addition to the myth which serves to
link the present with ancient times. Eliot has introduced a multitude of
reminiscence of other poets into the fabric of his poem. By this method he is
able to suggest the extensive consciousness of the past and to reveal the sameness
as well as the contrasts between the life of the present and that of the
past.
There
is a general feeling of fear in Waste Land-modern and ancient. April inspires
fear. Marie is frightened in her moment of sexual delight on her cousins’
sledge. The “Son of Man” is urged to endure the vision of fear and mortality in
the desert, and the lover in the garden is neither living nor dead. Fear is
common to all times ad periods of history. Unemotional sea or lust is a feature
of all ages too. It has become a source of moral degradation. For instance, we
find in the poem the picture of three Thows daughters who live on being the
objects of sexual enjoyment in exchange of money. Cleopatra was, of course, an
exception. But Philomel’s rape by the barbarous king is “Game of Chess” strikes
the keynote of this section linking the past and the present.
Thus,
Eliot in “The Waste Land” has cast his vision of the contemporary erotic and
spiritual aridity into a general perspective beyond berries of historical time
or national or geographical boundaries. The framework of the myth and the recurrent allusions the portrayal of
characters, the presentation of scenes of seduction and violation of women, the
literary reminiscences and quotations all the contribute to giving the poem a
permanent and universal quality.