T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland contains a melting pot of voices, experiences, perceptions, senses, and allusions. While this masterful work may have the appearance of disorder, the issue of order, or attempts to find order are not completely absent within the work, nor the way the work was put together by Eliot himself. Within Section II: “A Game of Chess,” lines 111-134 are full of frenzied questions. The speaker asks “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?...What shall we do now?...What shall we ever do?” (9). The repetition of these questions, and the exploration of their variations (sometimes drawn out questions, other times single words fragmented from complete thoughts) speaks to the chaotic mind of the speaker, but this frantic display is immediately followed by a startling attempt to create order. The speaker continues: “The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess” (9). Here, events are specifically designated a time and a chronological order. Devoid of the type of emotion that preceded it, this objectivity stands out, though the order created here (or the attempt to create order here), still seems empty compared to the deep emotional and psychological concerns immediately before. The supposed order does not solve problems or answer questions, but perhaps is a way to cope with the reality of not knowing and of uncertainty.

In regards to the way that this text is published, I think that it is very interesting that Eliot himself chooses to create a sort of order for the reader by including his own footnotes that identify important allusions. This, of course, is assuming that The Wasteland was originally published with these notes. While we heavily rely on annotated works in our studies today, I have not come across many authors who would provide such substantial documentation of their sources in a creative literary work. Such original documentation by the author would certainly make poets like Pope easier for students to read. Evidently, Eliot does not want the reader to miss his references, or to overlook their importance. As such, it seems that not only are these references extremely meaningful, but he is ascribing that meaning to the reader in a practical way merely by providing the footnotes in the first place. While the references themselves are seamlessly interwoven into his poem, the footnotes seem to create a sense of order to the madness. I wonder if he does this to reach a wider audience? Or if this was a typical convention? Or if he is merely trying to assert more control over his work and the way that we read it?