The first time I read The Waste Land, I can honestly say that I didn’t understand it very much as I thought I would. I could observe that the purpose of this poem was to narrate a story within a poetic structure. As I recall from last semester’s Spanish class, this is called an Epic Poem.
I can relate it to The Iliad, which is an epic poem that narrates some of the events before the Trojan War. The Waste Land wanted to communicate the events of the narrator, Marie, as she undergoes different circumstances in her life. The Waste Land doesn’t follow a rhyme scheme with a certain pattern, or at least you don’t notice it right away. Some segments tend to follow rhyme schemes such as ABABA, or AABB, etc. Depending on the voice of the part in the poem, the rhyme scheme varies. The meter is also very strange because it doesn’t follow a pattern as well. Each line has a different amount of syllables. This is very strange in poetry, because many of the time authors try to include these structures to revel an ideology or just the purpose of the text. As TS Elliot ignores these common trends, he makes a statement. In my personal opinion I would say that the author tries to convey these literary actions with the meaning of the poem as a whole. By just looking as the title I inferred that this poem was about how the world is a nasty place, a trashcan of humanity.
As I read The Waste Land, I could see that humanity is the main target of criticism. The negative aspects described in this text, leads the reader to despite at some point its own nature. In the following quote I found a very good example of this,
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! Hypocrite lecteur!mon -semblable, mon frère ! » (71-76)
In this segment of the text, I could see that Marie the narrator is asking someone about a corpse that they buried in their garden. This is showing a very common human behavior: murder. The natural reaction to committing this act is hiding the evidence to avoid a condemnation from society. The dog is also mentioned as the best friend of men and therefore the loyalty of this animal will try to find the dead body instead of hiding it like humans would. The capitalization of the word Dog indicates the superiority of the animal for its sincere qualities and acts of friendship. By capitalizing this word, the author is also inferring that the Dog is superior to humans as well as God is over the universe. This may be very ironic to many people because humans are supposed to be the masters of these animals, but if you analyze what the author is proposing it is very logical, because dogs are men’s best friend, while men is the enemy of men: We are our own enemy. The narrator also addresses us the readers to make us understand that when she talks about men she is also referring to us, that is why she uses “mon frère.” (my brother) .
As I continued with my reading I encountered many literary devices. One of them was the total capitalization of s group of words that I saw repeatedly through a part of the poem. “HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME,” was the sentence that I saw so many times and that mad me think that it definitely has something to do with the whole theme of the poem. For me, these words have a meaning that is related to life and its length. There is a person that is hurrying another person up so they can have something done within a time limit. Obviously this alludes to life. You want to live all you can while you are still in the world, and sometimes you have to hurry up to be able to accomplish your goals. The repetition of these words is also a literary device that the author uses to emphasize the importance of their meaning. He wants the reader to know that they have an important significance and that they will probably help with the overall understanding of the poem at the end.
Another literary device that I saw in this poem was onomatopoeia. The use of words that represent sounds are very common within the context of the story. I have read very few texts that include onomatopoeia in them as literary resource. Most of those who do, use it because of necessity as they describe scene that includes those sounds. In The Waste Land, there are various examples like the following,
“White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves.”(289-395)
As we can see, the author uses a lot of this literary devises to make the poem more realistic. When the poem makes reference to this sounds and noises, it makes the story even more similar to life itself. The purpose of this poem is to make allusions to life and humanity. When these elements are included, the reader gets more convinced of the allusion being true. These sounds may also be connected in some way with the tone and the voice of the story. This gives the poem character and it differentiates from other poems that want to make a similar approach.
Finally I wanted to comment on a quote that I thought was very interesting and that connected to many of my self-experiences,
“We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.”( )
When I read this fragment of the poem, it made me reflect about how we make up these things in our head all the time. These things are full of negativism and they only create worries and unnecessary suffering. When you think of yourself of a victim, then you will end up being a victim of yourself. The second connection that I made with this quote was related to my childhood. I lived in London for a couple of years and when I was traveling to France in the train that crosses the English channel, there was a boy that kept singing, “London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady…” This moment is pretty much the only one I remembered form my trip inside the train, and it just stuck to my memory for ever. I still remember the face of the boy who sang it, because impressively, he wasn’t English but he was Indian.
I can relate it to The Iliad, which is an epic poem that narrates some of the events before the Trojan War. The Waste Land wanted to communicate the events of the narrator, Marie, as she undergoes different circumstances in her life. The Waste Land doesn’t follow a rhyme scheme with a certain pattern, or at least you don’t notice it right away. Some segments tend to follow rhyme schemes such as ABABA, or AABB, etc. Depending on the voice of the part in the poem, the rhyme scheme varies. The meter is also very strange because it doesn’t follow a pattern as well. Each line has a different amount of syllables. This is very strange in poetry, because many of the time authors try to include these structures to revel an ideology or just the purpose of the text. As TS Elliot ignores these common trends, he makes a statement. In my personal opinion I would say that the author tries to convey these literary actions with the meaning of the poem as a whole. By just looking as the title I inferred that this poem was about how the world is a nasty place, a trashcan of humanity.
As I read The Waste Land, I could see that humanity is the main target of criticism. The negative aspects described in this text, leads the reader to despite at some point its own nature. In the following quote I found a very good example of this,
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! Hypocrite lecteur!mon -semblable, mon frère ! » (71-76)
In this segment of the text, I could see that Marie the narrator is asking someone about a corpse that they buried in their garden. This is showing a very common human behavior: murder. The natural reaction to committing this act is hiding the evidence to avoid a condemnation from society. The dog is also mentioned as the best friend of men and therefore the loyalty of this animal will try to find the dead body instead of hiding it like humans would. The capitalization of the word Dog indicates the superiority of the animal for its sincere qualities and acts of friendship. By capitalizing this word, the author is also inferring that the Dog is superior to humans as well as God is over the universe. This may be very ironic to many people because humans are supposed to be the masters of these animals, but if you analyze what the author is proposing it is very logical, because dogs are men’s best friend, while men is the enemy of men: We are our own enemy. The narrator also addresses us the readers to make us understand that when she talks about men she is also referring to us, that is why she uses “mon frère.” (my brother) .
As I continued with my reading I encountered many literary devices. One of them was the total capitalization of s group of words that I saw repeatedly through a part of the poem. “HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME,” was the sentence that I saw so many times and that mad me think that it definitely has something to do with the whole theme of the poem. For me, these words have a meaning that is related to life and its length. There is a person that is hurrying another person up so they can have something done within a time limit. Obviously this alludes to life. You want to live all you can while you are still in the world, and sometimes you have to hurry up to be able to accomplish your goals. The repetition of these words is also a literary device that the author uses to emphasize the importance of their meaning. He wants the reader to know that they have an important significance and that they will probably help with the overall understanding of the poem at the end.
Another literary device that I saw in this poem was onomatopoeia. The use of words that represent sounds are very common within the context of the story. I have read very few texts that include onomatopoeia in them as literary resource. Most of those who do, use it because of necessity as they describe scene that includes those sounds. In The Waste Land, there are various examples like the following,
“White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves.”(289-395)
As we can see, the author uses a lot of this literary devises to make the poem more realistic. When the poem makes reference to this sounds and noises, it makes the story even more similar to life itself. The purpose of this poem is to make allusions to life and humanity. When these elements are included, the reader gets more convinced of the allusion being true. These sounds may also be connected in some way with the tone and the voice of the story. This gives the poem character and it differentiates from other poems that want to make a similar approach.
Finally I wanted to comment on a quote that I thought was very interesting and that connected to many of my self-experiences,
“We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.”( )
When I read this fragment of the poem, it made me reflect about how we make up these things in our head all the time. These things are full of negativism and they only create worries and unnecessary suffering. When you think of yourself of a victim, then you will end up being a victim of yourself. The second connection that I made with this quote was related to my childhood. I lived in London for a couple of years and when I was traveling to France in the train that crosses the English channel, there was a boy that kept singing, “London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady…” This moment is pretty much the only one I remembered form my trip inside the train, and it just stuck to my memory for ever. I still remember the face of the boy who sang it, because impressively, he wasn’t English but he was Indian.
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