The Wasteland is a poem fraught with violent and unregenerate sexual events. In Part II, “A Game of Chess,” the reader is confronted with both a high-class and low-class scene suggesting such sexuality. A painting of Philomel, a Greek goddess, details her rape “by the barbarous king / So rudely forced,” in the gaudy high-class home. Conversely, the next section contains a conversation between Lil and her unfortunate friend. The friend thinks it very important to remind Lil that her only value is as a sex toy for Albert, a value that the friend is more than willing to take on as her own. Throughout this section a line resounds, “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.” My first reading of this led me to believe it read “it’s” and not “its.” Now I must ask, whose time? Who is the it whose time has suddenly come to bear? The repetition of this line leads me into a discussion on Tiresias, the true prophet to whom no one listens, as opposed to Madame Sosostris. Tiresias, “throbbing between two lives,” is forced to view another scene of unregenerate sexuality. The prophet watches a female typist who is “assault[ed]” by a man who “makes a welcome of indifference,” and rapes her. Though Tiresias is blind, the prophet is forced to “perceive” this rape. Tiresias has “foresuffered all / Enacted on this same divan or bed,” repeatedly, just as the reminder to hurry is repeated throughout the latter section of part 2. In this way, Tiresias has already suffered for this scene, and all the other unregenerate sexual acts which the prophet has been forced to witness. This is the definition of trauma, the inability to separate past from present, the inability to stop reliving the traumatic events of the past in the present. The line “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” is a representation of Lil’s own trauma circulating throughout the poem. The typist, as if in response to Lil’s own trauma-induced repetition, simply says after her own rape “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” But it begs the question, will it ever really be over for her?