The Wasteland Essay Research Paper TS Eliot — страница 2

  • Просмотров 364
  • Скачиваний 6
  • Размер файла 17
    Кб

The second section is titled A Game of Chess, implying a strategic game is to be played. This section gives us a depiction of the effects of improper love or lust and passion. The two scenes in this section show the two sides of improper love in two times. The first starts with symbols of beauty and fertility that have become out of date for the society. They are no longer vital and fertile but withered stumps of time. This scene is the raping of Philomel by king Tereus in Greek legend. The king raped Philomel, his wife s sister, and then the he cut out her tongue to silence her. The gods turn her into a nightingale to save her from the king. As a nightingale she has a voice that can t be silenced by the evil of the world. This nightingale gives us a renewed hope by being reborn

as the phoenix, with hair in fiery points. None of these gods appeared to be operating to redress societal wrongs in Eliot s time. The second scene in this section is the story of an unidentified lower class woman. In this woman s tale, all of the lives around her have been consumed with improper love. The improper love in this time is more directly influenced by the apathy of the people rather than the evil of the world. The evil is still around, and no one cares that it is consuming their society. So the game of chess ends in stalemate, no one can move and no one cares enough to do so. These two situations represent the lost vitality of our culture and parallel the loss of vitality in the Fisher King. The Fisher King has lost his fertility and here in these to situations

normally associated with fertility we find none. In the first case it is a violated love that results in a transformation and escape. The second, a more modern reference, we see a deliberate disregard for fertility. The woman here has several abortions to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. The fertility of the Fisher King is gone and in its place are rapes and abortions. These two improper loves take place in a broken and withered culture where the meaning of love and its vitality are gone. Just as the Fisher King is loss of vitality, the culture has lost the meanings behind its symbols of life and they no longer apply to its people. The third section is titled The Fire Sermon, suggesting that there is a way to redemption or a way to escape the fear and desolation of this life.

From the beginning there are examples of pure love but they are counterbalanced by the improper loves. The nightingale s song in this section parallels the juxtaposition of pure and improper love with the combination of its pure song, twit twit twit, and it s perverted song, jug jug jug. Both the examples of love and the nightingale s song are So rudely forc d . The next passage of this section introduces Tiresias who acts as an interpreter for the story. Tiresias, in Greek mythology, was both a man and a woman during his life. He was also given the gift of prophecy by one of the gods. Tiresias makes the best interpreter; he knows what will happen and he has experienced the lusts and urges of both sexes. This section ends with the ironic juxtaposition of heroic and mythical love

with modern situations of indecent love. The Fire Sermon was a sermon of Buddha that taught the only way to freedom was though the escape from the senses and passion. All senses and passions, even passionate love, are associated with sorrow, grief, and the lack of true happiness. The passion that is causes the pain here is linked with the suffering of the Fisher King. In the myth of the Fisher King he is wounded in his thigh or groin. This wound is symbolic of the loss of his vitality and ability to create. This wound consumes him and causes him constant pain and suffering. His areas of passion give him constant pain just as the Buddhist sermon links unhappiness with senses and their passions. The loss of society s vitality is associated with this unhappiness and pain. The first

World War was entirety an act of anger, hatred, and the passion of man s senses. These emotions lead to the sorrow and misery caused by war. The fourth section is titled Death By Water ; this title implies an ironic relationship with the fertile nature of water. In pagan beliefs, there was living water that is essentially a reference to the death and resurrection myth; the god was buried in the winter and resurrected in the spring. In Christian beliefs there is living water referred to by Christ as a symbol for salvation. In this section we see another reference to the Fisher King myth in the lost father of Ferdinand in Shakespeare s The Tempest. This section is a reminder of the death that awaits the Fisher King; his reprieve from suffering is death. He must wait for the hero to