The Waste Land Themes Essays


Found 81300 essays.

T.S. Eliots use of Poetic techniques in The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland

In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society.The Waste Land’s theme is that the world, in particular western civilisation, is a culturally and spiritually barren place.Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different.Though he may use devices differently for each poem, it is only in such a way that makes them unique, and conveys his purpose.The theme of Prufrock is the negative, individuality repressing effect that society has on its people.


465 words (1.2 pages)
Essay about The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot

Masterplots, 4th ed.Eliot in The Wasteland combines theme, style, and symbolism to explore life and death."The Waste Land."In his poetry, Eliot combines themes such as aridity, sexuality, and living death.Using themes and techniques from his earlier work, Eliot publishes The Wasteland.


440 words (1.1 pages)
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Elliot. Essay

It can be observed that “The Hollow Men” expresses the depths of Eliot’s despair, but the poet in a sense chooses despair as the only acceptable alternative to the false existence of the unthinking inhabitants of the waste land.The Dantescan image of the lost souls “Gathered on this beach of the tumid river” (5) belongs to a boundary theme that recurs throughout Eliot’s poetry: Prufrock escapes from the world of skirts and teacups to the world of visionary imagination by means of a “walk upon the beach.” (6) The protagonist of The Waste Land sits down and cries “By the waters of Leman,”(7) then on the shore “with the arid plain behind me.” (7) The persona of The Hollow Men has arrived, intellectually and physically, at the limit of one w...


623 words (1.6 pages)
Free Waste Land Essays: A New Understanding

The Waste Land: A New Understanding .Following Hugh Kenner's recommendation, we should lay to rest the persistent error of reading The Waste Land as a poem in which five motifs predominate: the nightmare journey, the Chapel, the Quester, the Grail Legend, and the Fisher King .If we listen attentively to the negations of The Waste Land, they tell us much about the poem that was missed when it was read from the affirmative point of view brought to it by its early defenders and admirers.The motifs are indeed introduced, as Eliot's preliminary note to his text informs us, but if (as this note says) "the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend," the plan c...


863 words (2.2 pages)
The Hollow Men By Thomas Stearns Eliot Essay

This theme is linked with various parts of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: .All three writings share similar themes and interconnect with each other in some retrospect.His first work, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917), is considered, in my opinion, the predecessor to his most influential work, The Waste Land (1922).The Waste Land incorporates a vast majority of the destruction of the inner spirit.The woman does not seem interested in participating and it seems like a chore to her.


485 words (1.2 pages)
”The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot

Classic art is never really either and The Waste Land is a classic work.The wind/ Crosses the brown land unheard.Eliot, in 1923,spoke of the voyage to the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travels as “one of the greatest triumphs that the human soul has ever achieved.” 20 In The Waste Land, Eliot evidently sought to make a similar revelation of the beatitude implied by disgust.’ (Thompson 159) .Thus, Eliot’s compositional plan for The Wasteland includes deliberate fragmentation of the poetic form itself; in addition to the radical diction and imagery of the opening lines, the poem’s multiple, titled sections as well as its stanzaic forms and diction express a recurrent theme of fragmentation and disintegration.When encountering The Wasteland fo...


1315 words (3.3 pages)
The Waste Land and Interpretations and Representations of the Modern World

The last two parts of his poem, Death by the Water and What the Thunder Said reinstates his representation of the modern world and plays further on his themes.In the second part of The Waste Land, he alludes to the classic works of Shakespeare and Virgil (Parker, 2002) and reflects on the different levels of love presumably towards women.It is believed that using The Waste Land, T.S.In sum, The Waste Land remains to be a heavy though intoxicating read.READING THE WASTE LAND: Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation.


1200 words (3 pages)
Ts Eliot As A Modernist Poet English Literature Essay

Those critics argued that “While T. S. Eliot might be called a medieval modernist because of his admiration for the organic and spiritual community of the Middle Ages together with his “impersonal” conception of art, his elitist and formalist views isolate him from several of the central terms of the tradition as I have defined it.” In other words, some characteristics of Eliot’s work exhibit medieval themes and style; at the same time, these works are also rooted in the modern orientation of literature.All these techniques help depict the modern life for the reader and reflect its status in real manner.Two of the most prominent poems where Eliot shows his modern orientations are “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land....


1051 words (2.6 pages)
The waste land by Eliot Essay

This is a double symbolism in that the symbolism of the water has reverted from a perversion back to its normal meaning, symbolizing the approaching end of the waste land.The perversion also emphasizes the waste land’s twisted mode of existence.Both of these references to water also tie in with the theme of the section, that fire is a symbol for the meaningless pleasures of the world.Finally, rain has come to the waste land, bringing with it the rebirth and cleansing that it has traditionally symbolized.This is yet another aspect of the waste land, and parallels the negative symbolism of the water; whereas the couple should be happy and loving, they are bored and disinterested, almost at war.


1448 words (3.6 pages)
Waste Land Essay: Spiritual Decay

Dwivedi; US Bahri Publishers (1989) .Southam, B.C., A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S.Spiritual Decay in The Waste Land .Eliot develops his theme of sterility and decay in the post-World War I man by focusing on the aspect of "religious dearth or superficiality reflected in despintualized love" (Pinion).Raffel, Burton IS Eliot Frederick Ungar Publising Co., Inc. (1982) .


271 words (0.7 pages)
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot Essay

Eliot provided copious footnotes with the publication of The Waste Land in book form; these are an excellent source for tracking down the origins of a reference.The Waste Land Section III: “The Fire Sermon” .The final stanzas of “The Waste Land” once again link Western and Eastern traditions, transporting the reader to the Ganges and the Himalayas, and then returning to the Thames and London Bridge.The Waste Land Section IV: “Death by Water” .The Waste Land Section II: “A Game of Chess” .


3268 words (8.2 pages)
Waste Land Through The Lens Of Classicism English Literature Essay

The Waste Land is a modernist expatiation on the ‘waste’ – ‘dead land’, ‘dried tubers’, ‘dead tree’ (The Burial of the Dead ); ‘desert’, ‘withered stumps of time’, ‘nothing’ ( A Game of Chess); ‘brown land’, ‘wrinkled female breasts’, ‘dusty trees’, (The Fire Sermon); ‘a fortnight dead’, ‘passed’ (Death by Water); ‘dry grass’, ‘frosty silence’, ’empty chapel’ (What the Thunder Said) – that punctuates modern consciousness.Eliot’s The Waste Land qualifies the popularly conceived notions around Modernism and Classicism.It is this regenerated ‘sprout’ and ‘bloom’ of poetry on the corpse of ‘the waste land’ that makes this work a ‘Modernist Classic.’ .He once remarked, “The ideal medium for poetry, to my mind, and the most direct means of soc...


2664 words (6.7 pages)
Significance Of The Representation Of The City English Literature Essay

The main theme of the poem can be distinguished through the way in which Eliot portrays modern life as a ‘Waste Land’.‘The Waste Land’ creates an unattractive image of London, we feel appalled by the amount of industrialization taking place as the surroundings are described as being encircled by ‘the brown fog’.I will be focusing on D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, T. S Eliot’s The Waste Land, and finally Virginnia Woolf”s Mrs Dalloway.As the readers read on in The Waste Land, they get a feeling which indicates that even if they were to read something happy and cheerful in the poem it would still have a dark effect.In the Waste Land “…the images and symbols fall broadly into two categories-firstly, images drawn from myth and religion, a...


2394 words (6.0 pages)
Influences Of Romanticism On The Waste Land English Literature Essay

This image of a single figure speaking in the voices of many others completes the comparison of The Waste Land to Whitman’s Song of Myself and clearly illustrates the influence of avant-garde romantic style on Eliot.The connection to romanticism’s symbolism may be apparent, but the bleak tone of The Waste Land discourages any comparison of its theme to the confident individualism that so inspired the romantic period.Tiresias, the spectator to society’s sad and inevitable descent into the waste land, is also the listener who hears the voice of the thunder, and its echoing call to peace.Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot strengthens this image of a corrupted society which stands in dire need of a romantic purging, until he ends it with the F...


1358 words (3.4 pages)
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot Essay

A wasteland [weyst-land] is defined as: land that is uncultivated or barren; an area that is devastated as by flood, storm, or war; something as a period of history, phase of existence, or locality that is spiritually, or intellectually barren; one of the most important poems of the twentieth century (Dictionary.com).Dictionary.com, 20 Nov. 2013.The text was very plain and boring.“Spark Notes: Eliot’s Poetry: Themes, Motifs, & Symbols.” SparkNotes.Dictionary.com is never a disappointment.


422 words (1.1 pages)
To live outside Essay

Eliot speaks about the land and how dust filled it is and how nothing is alive.In his book, “the Waste Land,” it is forced into our imagination that the world is dead; the earth is a waste land.The final episode of the Waste Land allows Eliot to finally establish the true wasteland of the poem, the modern city.The Waste Land takes on the degraded mess that Eliot considered modern culture to constitute, particularly after the First World War had ravaged Europe.In the first episode of the Waste Land by T.S.


1005 words (2.5 pages)
The Waste Land And The Great Gatsby Essay

The flu pandemics immediately following the war and to a smaller extent Russian Revolution, changed the world in only a few years....ng lost trying traverse in the post-war world when what you knew no longer feels right.Many works of modernist authors of this time depicted these same complications not to solve them but to simply communicate them.... middle of paper ... .Loneliness is a central theme and it is manifested in different ways.


469 words (1.2 pages)
Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Eliot: The Man and His Work.Works Cited Ackroyd, Peter.Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Thomas Stearns Eliot was not a revolutionary, yet he revolutionized the way the Western world writes and reads poetry.But the prevailing of his contradictions involves two major themes in his poetry: history and faith.Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays.


441 words (1.1 pages)
The Greatest Obstacle of the New Generation

As an ordinary citizen on the other hand, I should partake in efforts to conserve energy especially in the use of fossil fuels like minimizing energy consumption on electricity and the use of cars both of which has a direct impact on carbon emission.A major consequence of modernization is the production of waste, which includes our daily garbage, sewage, contaminated oil and other chemicals, and the worst, radioactive waste materials.(Lee, et al, 2000)  This can be implemented by regulating economic activities such as the conversion of land use, efficient safe processing of minerals and proper waste disposal, rehabilitation plans for wasted lands to ensure and restore productivity of the land, among many others.Finally, I can also patron...


644 words (1.6 pages)
A nature and sources of data

Secondary data were obtained from the Ibadan North Local Government Authority and Ibadan Waste Management Board.720 questionnaires were distributed among the various stakeholders, which include the public, planners and officials of Ibadan Municipal Government and Waste Management Board.The main aim of using the AHP is to assign weights to criteria and come out with the best alternative.It forms a polygon around a point, line or polygon theme by locating its boundaries at a specified distance.It is a spatial analysis known as proximity analysis, generating zones of a given distance around a feature theme.


1208 words (3.0 pages)
T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” Essay

Instead, the poem depicts a cultural and spiritual wasteland, a land populated by people who are, physically and emotionally, living a kind of death in the midst of their everyday lives.(1) In “What the Thunder said” from The Waste Land it reads What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal (366) The theme of the disintegration of pastoral life is an important aspect of the modern movement.Routledge, 1998.The first part of The Waste Land, “The Burial of the Dead,” presents the voice of a countess looking back on her pre-World War I youth as a lovelier, freer, more romantic time.New Fetter Lane, London 1997.


1171 words (2.9 pages)
Modernism in the Great Gatesby Essay

3.1.2 honesty and betrayal .it seems that all the characters in the novel are in need to fufil a desire.Desires in the novel are either materialistic or they commodifies persons which portraits the inhumanity of the 20th century.The novel investigates the theme of honesty in a new modern way which is lacking in the characters of The Great Gatsby ,including Jordan who cheats at golf.Within this context , New York City comes to be depicted as a symbol of what America has become in the 1920’s, a place where money is made throught bootleging and corruption.This statements can be illustrated by TS.Eliots The Waste Land in which the poet invites the reader to help him in his redumpting mission of the 20th century society.By the way,writings ...


1448 words (3.6 pages)
Sir Orfeo Treats The Passage Of Time English Literature Essay

In Early Celtic Irish literature to modern day Irish Literature, The Queen or ‘Lady of the land’ was a symbolic reference to Ireland itself.Herodis’ encounter with the fairy world by falling asleep under a tree highlights Nature as a key theme throughout Sir Orfeo.Orfeo is able to portray a time and culture of different values, a time where social interaction was of importance, he no longer has the magical powers in order to enter the land of the fairies.The ‘ympe-tree’ represents a portal to the other worlds, equally in the Breton lay Sir Degare, a fairy and a woman meet under a chestnut tree, proving a common theme in medieval literature.The poem itself lends its style to the form of a Breton lay, although it is still set on its origin...


2179 words (5.4 pages)
Essay on T.S. Eliot

He does this in both poems to show how utterly isolated people are in the twentieth century.In each poem Eliot makes a special point to show unsuccessful male-female relationships as an important theme.Eliot uses these poems to explain that there are not true relationships based on love in modern society, but only unsuccessful relationships based on immoral values.The entire poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” deals with one man’s total inability to be a part of any successful relationship with the opposite sex.Eliot experienced a very unsuccessful relationship with the opposite sex when he was married to a drug-addicted mental patient for several years.


180 words (0.5 pages)
Theme Of Sterility In Poem The Wasteland English Literature Essay

Through different passages he has been able to develop this theme of sterility.Eliot began work on the waste land un early 1919 but much of the work was done in late 1921 as he was staying on the coast of Margate in England and later on at a sanitarium in Luassanne, Switzerland where he was taking a rest after suffering a nervous breakdown as a result of his father’s death in 1919.Like Sibyl, Eliot sees little hope if any for the culture and the people to be regenerated.Through this description the poet is able to develop the theme of sterility.“The Waste Land” was first published in October 1922 in a magazine called “The Criterion”.


2051 words (5.1 pages)
Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle in Indonesian School at a Glance Essay

Reuse Reuse is utilizing the waste directly and advancing it without any recycling process.The final decision that had been taken was the school would redraw the plastics on by creating numerous innovative things, such as: the resave-able bags, comfortable sandals, handicrafts, simple garbage cans, seedling pots, etc., which the entire entities were made from plastic waste.This year, the school raised interesting theme up to draw the students for participating, that was “Monumental Building”.Materials ready to be recycled in this manner, such as empty beverage containers, are called postconsumer waste.Work toward recycling; one factory’s industrial waste can be another plan’s raw material, and make each individual aware of the problems—s...


2275 words (5.7 pages)
“The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot

In “The Poetry of TS Eliot”, DES Maxwell tells us that the blending of traditional European and Eastern thought is the necessary background to Eliot’s interpretation of the contemporary problem in “The Waste Land,” and basic symbolism is taken from the Grail legend.edition, 2005 .This essay describes how the juxtaposition forms of montage (which, as described by the Oxford English Dictionary as the technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of pictures, text or music) contributes to the meaning of “The Waste Land” by T.S.By reading the comments and discussion above, it can be seen how the use of the juxtaposition forms of montage are effectively used by TS Eliot in The Waste Land to convey spirituality, imagery and mea...


1784 words (4.5 pages)
T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

By changing the style, Eliot also changes how we feel about the life in the waste land.“Improper desire: reading The Waste Land”.In lines 183 and 184 (“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song/ Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.”) we find the speaker addressing the river; here we see an implicit manifestation of a natural desire for stability, even at the expense of living in this modern waste land from where “the nymphs are departed” (Eliot, lines 175, 179).This whole section is occupied by the different stories of three women, they are different in social status, different in the register of the language they use, different in the settings, but are the women representing the trivial life and spiritual emptiness ...


2525 words (6.3 pages)
Analyzing Characters in Tolkien's The Hobbit

Please consider the environmental reminder from the bottom of each e-mail to the separation of essential waste.- Hobbit is a story for children.The whole hobbit scene, characters and tests help to shape the overall theme of the novel.Hobbit is a precious and valuable book for kids, but adults ignore this work and drop them to the kindergarten shelf and hand it over to younger brothers or keep them in the next generation.People are increasingly aware of the side effects they need to improve urgently.


339 words (0.8 pages)
“All Quiet On The Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque

The offensive in which Paul finds Himmelstoss also highlights the theme of waste of life.In the novel, the author uses the themes of horror, sacrifice and waste of life to highlight the futility of war.The first example of “waste of life” is the death of Paul’s school friend Kemmerich.In conclusion, “All Quiet On The Western Front” effectively highlights many themes, such as horror of war, sacrifice and waste of life to show the ultimate futility of war.The army report for the day on which Paul died simply read “All quiet on the western front.” This shows that even though this man who the reader has come to know has died, in the whole war his death means nothing.


1493 words (3.7 pages)

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