Theme and Myth of The waste Land

About the theme of The Waste Land, Various interpretation have been given. Here i have given 5 theme of the poem The Waste land....

The theme of the waste land:-

About the theme of the waste land, various interpretations have been given. Those interpretations are often conflicting and contradictory. Critics like F.R.Leavis feel that the theme of the poem is ‘ the disillusionment of a generation’. It merely presence “a vision of dissolution and spiritual drought”. But it is very doubtful whether te public fully realized the significance of the poem.

Theme of criticism of life:-

The waste land, like Matthew Arnold’s scholor gipsy, offers a criticism of life in the sence often interpretation of its problames. In both there is a painful consciousness of the sickness and the fever and the fret of contemparory civilisation but the wasteland goes beyond a mere diagnosis of the spiritual distempers of the age ; it is a lament over man’s fallen nature, a prophecy and promise. Unlike arnold, who suggest a cure of escape form the feverish contact Eliot vaguely hints at the possibility of rebarth oviously there is no assurances of this redemption, but there is atleast te awareness that it is the only way out the conclusion of the poem give no assurence of any sort but the basic symbol used in the poem is one of restoration in to life through after hazardous quests. The legend of holygril which organized in fertility cult tales how a questioning knight saved the wasteland from drought and barrenness. Occasioned by the old age of the ruler, known as the fisher king. The knight must restore the latter’s youth by riding to the chapel perilous and there questioning the Lance and the Grail, symbols of the male and female principles. Eliot’s poem is an allegorical application of this story to modern society and religion. Our civilization is the waste land; we can obtain condition and learning a hard lesson. To enforce his premise, eliot uses symbols drawn from kindred myths and religions. In the process what iroinic pictures of modern manneres, wat superb mingling of satiric vulgarity and sensuous delicacy what prophetic earnestness, and what variety of imagery and rhythm are revealed. 

Theme of contemporary disintegration :-

One of the important themes of the waste land is ‘a vision of dissolution and spiritual drought’. This spiritual drought arises from te degeneration, vulgarisation, and commercialisation of sex. Eliot’s study of te fertility myths of different people had convinced him that sex-act is the source of life and vitality, when it is exercised for te sake of the fertility myths of different people had convinced him that sex-act is the source of life and vitality, when it is exercised for te sake of procreation and when it is an expression of love. But when it is severed from its primary function, and is exercised for the sake of momentary pleasure or momentary benefit, it becomes a source of degeneration and corruption. It then represents the primacy of the flesh over the spirit and this results in spiritual decay and death. It was a women, and Adam’s concupiscence or obedience to the flesh, that led to the original sin and the Fall of Man, and it is this very obedience to the flesh which accounts for the spiritual and emotional barrenness of the modern age.

The poem, in its spirit, reflects te anxiety, despair, neurosis, boredom, and mental vacuity of the modern age. In the contemporary waste land there is corruption and sexual degeneration at all levels. The title, a game of chess suggest that sex has become a matter of intrigue, a matter of moves and countermoves, a source of momentary pleasure, a sordid game of seduction and exploitation of the innocent. There is the fashionable society women who, despite all her pomp and show, despite all the luxury with which she surrounded, is bored and fed up with the meaningless routine of her life, and is neurotic and hysterical as a consequence. Her love, too, suffers from mental vacuity and is unable to keep up even small conversation.

Theme of Sexual perversion:-

Another important theme of the waste land is sexual perversion among the middle-class people. This is seen in the mechanical relationship of the typist and clerk. The typist gives herself to the Clark with a sense of total indifference and apathy. There is neither repulsion nor any pleasure, and this absence of feeling is a measure of the sterility of the age. It is just animal-like copulation. As soon as the young man has departed, te typist rearranges her hair, and puts a record on the gramophone, “ with automatic hands”. This perversion of sex is also to be seen in the lower classes of society. The songs of three themes daughters clearly show that they have been sexually exploited, but they can do nothing about it. They and their people are too poor and too apathetic to make any effort for the betterment of their lot. Man has grown inhuman; humanity has lost its humanity. That sex is a matter of momentary pleasure or a business proposition is also suggested by the image of the deserted Thames, which in the summer was a favourite picnic spot for the nymphs and their rich friends. Further, the conversation of the ladies in some London pub also brings out the sordid nature of sex relationship in the contemporary waste land. Not only has sex been vulgarize and commercialism, there also prevail abnormal sex-practices of various kinds. Thus Mr. Eugenides is a homo-sexual and Hotel Metro pole is a hot-bed of homosexuality, a relationship which is essentially sterile. All Europe is burning with lust and sexuality. Eliot suggests that there is an emphasis on the sanctity of sex. There is decay and spiritual degeneracy whenever the sexual function is perverted. The purpose of the sexual function is procreation and it is sanctified only in marriage. When the sexual act is separated from procreation there is spiritual degeneracy. In modern society there is perversion of sex, hence its degeneracy. Sex has been separated from love, marriage and procreation; the sex-act has become beastly or mere animal copulation, and hence there is decay and spiritual barrenness.

Theme of Life-in-death:-

According to cleanth Brooks, the theme of The Waste Land is life-in-death. It suggests the living death of the inhabitants of The Waste Land. Throughout the poem, it is evident that man is shown to have lost his passion, i.e. His faith in god and religion,- his passional participation in religion- and this decay of faith has resulted in the loss of vitality, both spiritual and emotional. Consequently, the life in the modern waste land is a life-in-death, a living death, like that of the sibyl at cumse. According to Eliot’s philosophy, insofar as we are human beings we must act and do either evil or good, and it is better to do evil then to do nothing. Modern man has lost his sese of good and evil, and this keeps him from being alive, from acting. In the modern desolate land the people are dead, they merely exist like dead things. As Stephen spender has pointed out, they are to be compared to such dead things as a stick, a gutter, a pipe at the most, theirs is a life-in-death, a life of complete inactivity, listlessness and apathy. That is why winter is welcome to them, and April is the cruellest of momths, for it reminds them of the stirrings of life and, “they dislike to be roused from their death-in-life”.

Theme exemplified in various parts of the poem:- 

Part 1, entitled, ‘The Burial of the dead’, emphasizes the inevitable dissolution which must precede new life, and begins with a lament over the loss of fertility in what should be a spring season and illustrate this by reproducing typical chatter of cosmopolitan idlers, passing thence to symbols of our barrenness. The decay of love in the modern world is then suggested. The section ends with a vision of London as an unreal city, in a nightmare of memories. In the lines,

                “That corpse you planted last year in your garden

                 Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”

The connection with the fertility cult is establish.

In Part 2, ‘A Game of Chess’,the title of which recalls the dramatic irony of Binaca and the fatal power of woman, he cleverly draws us to two types of modern women in contrasted literary styles. After picture of a luxurious boudoir which rivals Keats, he gives the petulant conversation of its occupant and her eternal question:

                 “What shall we do tomorrow?

                  What shall we ever do!”

In the next quest the tone of disgust deepens. The sordidness of urban pleasure suggests the flames of the poet has introduced into the boudior, touches of cleopatra and Dido, so now he recalls the rives of spenser’s prothalamion and with equally devastating irony, goes on to contrast the cynicism of the modern girl with the eighteenth century sentimental ideal. Similarly, He uses Wagner’s “Rhein-gold” melodies and a picture of Queen Elizabeth flirting with Leicester in her barge , to emphasize the permanence of human sensuality and the degradation to which it has now fallen. With intense agony of soul, he finally alludes to the repentance of saint Augustine and to the teaching of the Buddha.

After a short section, emphasizing the brevity of sensual life, the several themes are recapitulated in Part 5, and the way of escape vaguely hinted at. Our sterility is again asserted:

                   “Here os no water but only rock

                    Rock and no water and the sandy rode

                    The road winding above among the mountains

                    Which are mountains of rock without water.”

In this desert, we suffer illusion; where two walk there goes a shadowy third. There are murmurs and lamentation. When we reach the chapel perilous, it seems empty but as we doubt betraying rain. Self-surrender, Sympathy, Self-control-these three are the ways to salvation.

The poet speaks of setting his own house in order though London Bridge is falling down. He must pass through the fire of purification. He is hunted by images of desolation and a shower of literary allusion shows him slipping into frenzy. But like a charm of healing rain, he repeats the message of the thunder and ends with the blessing “Shantih, Shantih”.

What is Myth:-

Myths were the symbolic Presentation of primitive man’s instinct that his work-a-day world was interpenetrated with a super-rational or extra-rational activity. They were fabulous fictions which revealed physic facts. Modern anthropology sees all religion and all art springing and growing from this primitive root of symbolic transformation. By his symbol-making instinct man’s knowledge and experience of outer and inner world were projected into direct sensuous embodiment, giving them life and outline and meaning. In the juxtaposition of the ‘shape and significance’ of life, given expression in these symbolic terms with “the immense panorama of futility and anarchy” which is contemporary history, Eliot saw a hope for a new advance towards order and form.

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II. USE OF MYTH IN 'THE WASTE LAND'

T.S.Eliot's “The Waste Land” is the most sustained and complex use of the mythical method.Taking as its underlying pattern the great myth as interpreted by Jessie Weston,Sir James Frazer,and others, and weaving the theme of barrenness,decay and death, and the quest for life and ressurection which he found in these anthropological sources with the Christian story and with Buddhist and other oriental analogies,and incorporating into the poem both examples and symbols of the failure of modern civilization ,moral squalor and social vaccuam - which are inturn mythically and symbolically related to the anthropological and religious themes,Eliot endeavoured to project a complete view of civilization , of human history and human failure and of perennial quest for salvation . That the modern poet concerned with the complexities of his civilization can no longer count on any common body of knowledge in the light of which he can confidently use myth and symbol, is forced by the condition of his time to create or re-create his own myths and to draw on his own perhaps highly unusual reading for reference and allusion

is a commonplace.It is the comprehensive aim of “The Waste Land”to make necessary dependence on a synthetic myth.

In a review of James Joyce's Ulysses in 'The Dial ‘1923 , Eliot wrote -'' I hold this book to be the most important expression which the present age has found . ...In using myth , in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity , Mr . Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him ... it is simply a way of controlling , of ordering , of giving a shape and a significance to the immense penorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history ... instead of narrative method , we may now use the mythical method ''. The mythical method of Eliot, however, is different that of Joyce in Ulysses.Joyce follows the technic of elaboration and expansion, but Eliot has adapted the technic of compression and telescoping, with a poetic shorthand. He has frankly acknowledged his debt to Jessie Weston's “From Ritual to Romance” and Frazer's “The Golden Bough”, specially the portion dealing with the fertility rituals.Frazer's work was significant for Eliot because it demonstrates the continuity between the primitive and the civilized and revealed the substratum of savagery and violence beneath the surface of civilization.When in 1921,Eliot saw a performance of Igor Stravinsky”s Le Sacre du

Printemps,in which the ballet was based upon vegetation rites,he missed 'the sense of present' in everything except in the music.In his music there was a continuity between the the primitive past and the civilized present which was later on reflection in “The Waste Land”too(That corpse you planted last yearin your garden) and the barbaric cries of modern life are heard in the 'sound of horns and motors which shall bring /Sweeny to Mrs porterin the spring. Eliot has used both Pagan and Christian myths. From Egypt, he borrowed of the fertility ritual myth. The effigy