The Wasteland: A Poem about Despair and Alienation (Blog Post #7)

My Interpretation…

Set during the World War 1 Era, but written like a poem that would give even William Shakespeare a hard time reading it, the Wasteland by T.S. Eliot is a poem reflecting the dreadful state the society is in during and after the war times. The author wrote five thematic poems that share a same central purpose, and guide through the tale of a young woman as she is recounting experiences in the early 20th century. The central message she is portraying to the audience, which is not necessarily those who lived during the time but also afterwards, is that the society that was created after the booming of a new economy during the 2nd Industrial Era, was a society that was desolate and devoid of human interaction and connection. The author through the young narrator’s eyes and voice, displays the horrible atrocities from WWI: the abandonment and return of war veterans who became disconnected with their families, the rape culture that sprouted from lack of men and women who were not able to perceive or communicate terrors respectively, and last but not the least, the damaging tolls of a demanding war economy on its industrial workers. It’s almost ironic that a poem, literature who’s very soul or meaning is funded upon emphasizing the cultural time period of the writer, displays a lack of cultural significance or ideals.

Questions…

I wonder if T.S Eliot would consider our modern society to have progressed or even regressed with the advent of new technologies, despite it being that it was an industrial boom that was one of the leading causes of the society of the poem. Because it’s almost as if he purposefully avoided the positive attributes f the society at the time to write such a depraved masterpiece.

Also the titles of the various sections bewildered me, especially the “The Game of Chess.” They seem to have little to no significance to the actual storyline or plot of the poem, so a question I would want to attribute Eliot concerns why he chose those specific titles, because the poem would still have flown without the addition of them. Maybe it’s to add a sense of mystery to the poem other than the fact that we don’t know who the narrator is, and what significance she holds to the writer. Who knows.