In attempting to understand some context around “The Waste Land,” I read one review of the poem that explained how its obscurity is a demonstration of Eliot’s modernist approach. The shifts in narration, location, legends and mythology references and characters are a whirlwind of emotions, memories and predictions all connected to the death and despair created by World War I. Eliot’s style not only made this poem famous, but also contributed to society’s intrigue of a lost generation after the war. To learn that “The Waste Land” was such a popular poem makes me wonder if survivors of the Great War understood how they were living in history and how the significance of this poem would reverberate their generation a century later. It would be interesting to discuss in class what demonstrates modernism in this poem.

Lines 43-55 about Madame Sosostris and her “wicked pack of cards” (46) remind me of class discussions from earlier in the semester about family seeking mediums to talk to dead soldiers. In this case, the spiritual source is looking forward into the future instead of backward into the past. The blank card, one-eyed merchant and absence of the hanged man are foreboding and suggest to the narrator that he should “fear death by water” (55), but I’m curious as to how that is possible when so much of the poem is about the dry earth and desolation. The line about crowds of people walking around in a ring leaves me with questions, but then again so much of “The Waste Land” is difficult for this novice to understand.

I can see how the indifferent love scene featuring the typist and the clerk in “The Fire Sermon” section represents the lifeless personalities of those who remained following the war. She is “bored and tired” (236) with his sexual intentions, and after he leaves she barely notices he’s gone. The woman turns to music from her gramophone to fill the void after their meeting — an encounter she is glad is over. There’s no spark or desire to feel lust or love — just the eerie background music grinding from the gramophone. The woman is merely going through the motions to keep on living. The generation expected to rebuild after World War I experienced much the same situation. How were survivors supposed to find energy and light in life when surrounded by war’s wasteland? This reality is reinforced with the narrator’s declaration of how he can “connect nothing with nothing” (301-02). In a barren world where April, known as one of the most thriving times of the year, is perceived as the cruelest month for growing flowers from dry land — where spring is hated for producing life — its easy to see how and where Eliot got his inspiration to write about the defeated human spirit after the Great War.