The Waste Land
T.S Eliot
The Waste Land as a title is symbolic to death above ground, and how after WW1 London was left to be a lifeless “wasteland”. The main theme throughout the poem is life/death/people that lose purpose of their lives that may as well be dead.
The Greek text underneath the title translates to, “I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage and when the boy said to her, “Sibyl what do you want?” that one replied, “I want to die.”” Sibyl was an ancient Greek prophetess who asked Apollo for a long life (measured in grains of sand), but Sibyl forgot to ask for long youth as well, which would have saved her from aging and later on dying. She continued to live forever but as a very old lady, and later when asked what she wanted in life, she asked to die. It sets up the entire poem – people living in the “Wasteland” wanted to escape it by any means possible.
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