This was my first time reading "The Waste Land" and, unfortunately, my copy of the poem does not include any footnotes. I felt incredibly lost after my first reading so I read some of the posts on the blog to see if that could clear up any confusion. I then started looking up more information on the poem and did several more readings. Obviously, Eliot's extensive use of quotations convey his modernist style, but it also seems to me that he tries to include references to texts and authors that are integral parts of the Western canon (Shakespeare, Baudelaire, the Bible). I think that Eliot's heavy use of these references injected into sections that are narrated by different speakers illustrates a central consciousness; the shared knowledge and understanding of important literary works unite us (Different european countries and The US).

I also think that Eliot's use of fragmented voices and different speakers creates a sense of chaos that mimics the destruction left behind after WWI. The reader is constantly trying to make sense of what is happening (especially me, reading sans footnotes) while the speakers move from thought to thought without any clear sense of unity between ideas. The title is telling here, because it causes me to envision a world left over after a war: one that has been decimated and there is no life left. I think this hopelessness and chaos is reflected in the writing.