"The Waste Land" - By T. S. Eliot

"The Waste Land", is a poem jam packed with symbolism from religions, mythologies and history like Christianity, Greek Mythology and Shakespeare's writings. Eliot published this poem in 1922.

"The Waste Land" is T. S. Eliot's way of saying society is corrupted.

 Poem's structure is divided into five sections:

1)    The Burial of The Dead

2)    A Game of Chess

3)    The Fire Sermon

4)    Death by Water

5)    What the Thunder  Said

These five parts are a meditation on the state of Western civilization, especially concerning the sense of despair, waste, and ineffectiveness of the post-World War I era; the poem blends descriptions of contemporary life with literary allusions and quotations, religious symbolism, and references to ancient and medieval cultures and mythologies, vegetation and fertility rites, as well as Eastern religions and philosophies; the poem emphasizes themes of barrenness and wretchedness and portrays a dying society, but the ending suggests hope of redemption through concepts and images grounded on the synthesis of Christian and Eastern (Hindu/Buddhist/Taoist) spirituality. Although it is debated as to whether Eliot wrote the poem as a collection of five separate poems or one long one in five “parts.”

The tone reflects the experiences of a man who lived through World War I. It is best summarized in the poem itself, and in part of the dedication to Ezra Pound, “For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered, ‘I want to die.’

The poem begins with its most famous line,

First part opens with the famous line, "April is the cruellest month." The speaker, Marie, is a young woman who bears witness to the physical and emotional devastation caused by the war.

Parts Two and Three describe the inside of a wealthy woman's bedroom and the garbage-filled waters of the Thames, respectively. Part IV eulogizes a drowned man named Phlebas.

In the fifth and final part of the poem, the speaker "translates" the thunderclaps cracking over an Indian jungle. The poem ends with the repetition of the Sanskrit word for peace: "Shantih shantih shantih."