Every time I read "The Waste Land" I delve deeper into the poem and find more understanding into what Eliot is trying to say. Eliot is very good at playing with words. In the first part of the poem hew talks about winter and the dead. In his line "Winter kept us warm" he is referring to the dead. The men that fought in the war part of a lost generation. So many lives were lost in the war and Eliot points out that loss in his poem. In part two of the poem he critiques the war again, "I think we are in rats' alley where the dead men lost their bones". Here Eliot is referring to the trenches. In this part of the poem someone is remembering the war and he is lost in his memories. The war brought so much pain and death and for the men and women that did return, many of them were never the same again. This poem reflects the tragedies that occurred during and because of the war. Eliot shows different aspects of the war and none of them are very good.