Shoring Up Fragments Against Our Ruin: Quotations and Allusions
From The Waste Land Wiki
(→Introduction) |
(→Introduction) |
||
| Line 13: | Line 13: | ||
Furthering the downfall of man are the mythologies of the Aeneid, Cleopatra and Antony, and Philomel. Each story ends in tragedy of man and woman’s downfall from their former selves. This is shown via Dido succumbing to her frenzied love, Cleopatra and Antony falling for their ‘love’, and Philomel for being brutally raped. Each is an image of destruction toward a being, showing the end of themselves in the poem. At the same time it’s a vindictive glorification of these destructions like the begging about Cleopatra sitting in a beautiful throne. Yet all this beauty is to waste as the war is something not beautiful but terrible. It is a reoccurring theme that can be found throughout the poem. | Furthering the downfall of man are the mythologies of the Aeneid, Cleopatra and Antony, and Philomel. Each story ends in tragedy of man and woman’s downfall from their former selves. This is shown via Dido succumbing to her frenzied love, Cleopatra and Antony falling for their ‘love’, and Philomel for being brutally raped. Each is an image of destruction toward a being, showing the end of themselves in the poem. At the same time it’s a vindictive glorification of these destructions like the begging about Cleopatra sitting in a beautiful throne. Yet all this beauty is to waste as the war is something not beautiful but terrible. It is a reoccurring theme that can be found throughout the poem. | ||
| − | A Game of Chess concludes with a conversation regarding the female narrator’s duty to make a good appearance for her returning (husband/lover), fearing that her man will be lost. This depiction of a modern household reveals how people have succumbed to their own darkness while | + | A Game of Chess concludes with a conversation regarding the female narrator’s duty to make a good appearance for her returning (husband/lover), fearing that her man will be lost. This depiction of a modern household reveals how people have succumbed to their own personal darkness while the aftermath of the war begins to descend onto London. Showing that man even outside of the war is not outside of the downfall that war brings. Humanity in general began to crumble as WW1 came around, and so A Game of Chess reflects that through the literature Europeans are most familiar with. |
Eliot taps into Buddhist teachings to relate the fire sermon to the modern state of despair. The title of section three, “[[“The Fire Sermon” Annotations|The Fire Sermon]],” alludes to Buddha’s teachings regarding the burning of passions and vices. Buddha preaches and declares the burning of sensory body parts, leading his disciples, the Bhikkus, to be liberated from their passions. Eliot borrows this idea and distorts it. Beyond the title itself, the fire sermon remains an underlying message in the text, blanketing every scene and narrative shift. | Eliot taps into Buddhist teachings to relate the fire sermon to the modern state of despair. The title of section three, “[[“The Fire Sermon” Annotations|The Fire Sermon]],” alludes to Buddha’s teachings regarding the burning of passions and vices. Buddha preaches and declares the burning of sensory body parts, leading his disciples, the Bhikkus, to be liberated from their passions. Eliot borrows this idea and distorts it. Beyond the title itself, the fire sermon remains an underlying message in the text, blanketing every scene and narrative shift. | ||
| − | The incorporation of Buddha’s sermon offers a plethora of interpretations, however. The implication of | + | The incorporation of Buddha’s sermon offers a plethora of interpretations, however. The implication of historical relevancy is prevalent, to be sure, but the text virtually inverts Buddhist thought. While the sermon was a more positive outlook of freedom from worldly emotions, Eliot adopts a negative lens through which he views modern London. Burning, and begging for God to “pluck” him out, one of the narrators within the text associates the modern feeling of hopelessness and agony, emotions blazing powerfully as the aftermath of the war, to the sermon. |
==THE WASTE LAND== | ==THE WASTE LAND== | ||
