The Waste Land

    The Waste Land is a long poem by T. S. Eliot, published in 1922. There are 434 lines in the poem. It is divided into five parts as under,

     1) The Burial of the Dead                                 2)A Game of Chess.     
     3) The Fire Sermon.       
     4) Death by Water.         
     5) What the Thunder Said   
               
   so, it is divided into these five parts. There are many myths in the novel like Holy Grail, Fisher King, king Oedipus, Sisyphus, Sibyl, Tiresias, Vegetation, Philomila etc. This poem is about degradation of spirituality. It is made up of collage of images. Western society had exhausted its spiritual and cultural legacy. It is also a religious poem- a Christian poem. The Christian material is at the centre, but the poet never deals with it directly. So, there are various images together in the poem, every image is different yet unity is there in the poem. Throughout the poem we come back to the same point, but at different levels.

        Thus, it is wonderful poem in different images and yet wholeness is there.


Thank you.