In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot integrates voices from all throughout human history in this fascinating critique of Western tradition and World War I. His quotations and references include the Canterbury Tales, various Shakespearian plays, the Bible, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, to name a few. These pieces, though originating at different times and in different countries, are all part of Western culture and tradition. By bringing all these pieces of Western culture together in The Waste Land, a work that critiques World War I and the modern condition, Eliot is possibly suggesting that the ultimate end of the great advances in Western culture is nothing but confusion and violence.

Line 60, beginning with “Unreal City” introduces a particularly bleak section that hinges on a passage from Dante’s Inferno. Here, Eliot describes how “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many / I had not thought death had undone so many” (62-63). This passage compares the crowds of the morning commute in London to the masses of people fated to reside in the vestibule of Hell. Eliot seems to suggest that, in spite of the wonderful culture of the past, the present is nothing but hellish monotony. To add to this gloomy idea, many of the people in this commute are heading to work in factories that manufacture war supplies. The War is a source of great unhappiness, but people continue to plod along to their regular routine, sealing their unfortunate fates.