Section 5: Summary: What the Thunder Said

     The final section of the Waste Land is about hope and resurrection. In the first paragraph there is an allusion to a Garden – Gethsemane – the garden that Jesus was in when the Roman soldiers took him away to be crucified.  This refers from the time before he was crucified to after it.      The next few paragraph backs up idea of wasteland and the title of the entire poem. “Here is no water but only rock, rock and no water and the sandy road…” there’s no water which means there’s no life. Where the ‘sweat is dry’  you won’t find water. The mountains are dead because nothing can grow, nothing can blossom or sustain without water. “If there were water and no rock if there were rock and also water and water a spring a pool among the rock…”  The idea if there was water there would be hope. Wanting to only wanting to hear the sound of water, they didn’t want to hear the ‘cicada’ or grasshopper or the ‘dry grass singing’. But if there were water, there would actually be grasshoppers to chirp and the grass would no longer be dry. However, “there is no water.”  
     “Who is the third who walks always beside you?....gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a mon or a woman…” this is an allusion to the bible, 2413 after crucification, burial, and resurrection. People are walking and when Jesus approaches he makes it so the people don’t recognize him. The people invite him into town, Emmaus, and sit down and eat and split bread. When the people finally realize that Jesus was present he disappears.
     Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London(/Unreal) are major cities in Europe that are morally sacked culture capitals. (SITE – see comment) “The list plots out the course of Western civilization, from its origins in classical and biblical cultures to its modern European efflorescence. As with so much of the poem, Eliot is being cryptic, particularly in his choice of the two modern cities. One can understand London: the cradle of democracy and the rule of law. But Vienna? Is there a hint in that choice of a civilization gone to seed, a place of elegance and opulence, yes, but a falling off from the human search for the order of the soul and the order of the common wealth? And does London, by its place on the sequence, also exist the downward slope of cultural history?”
     “The woman drew her long black hair out tight” - this woman refers to Cleopatra. Cleopatra relates to the failed relationships in section 2 which correlates with the countries relationships. After WWI a lot of valuable relationships and allies had been ruined, and Germany, the country that ended up basically fucked, was given the Treaty of Versailles. They had to accept the blame for all the loss and damage of the war.  
     “In this decayed hole among the mountains,” the grassy mountains obviously means had life, which means it had water! The grass sings because it’s revitalized and alive. The chapel is an allusion to King Arthur. One of king Arthurs knights went to find the Holy Grail in a chapel. The rooster cry is an allusion to the bible – it’s an allusion to Peter’s denial of Jesus – Jesus says that Peter will deny Jesus three times before the rooster cries. When Peter is asked if he knows of Jesus he says no three times, denying God. He later figures out what he did and is very remorseful. “Bringing rain” means BRINGING HOPE.
     Ganga refers to the Granges river in South India, and rivers mean water, and water means LIFE!  
      Datta means GIVE, Dayadhyam means SYMPATHIZE, and Damyata means CONTROL. The three D words refer to the creator of god in the Hindu religion, and they all make a sound that is similar to that which a thunder would make (thunder sometimes brings rain.) The creator of God says three things that instruct the lesser gods to (1) give things despite their nature cheapness, and (2) control their rowdy behaviors. The third is that he tells the demons to sympathize.
     “I have heard the key turn in the door once and turn only once,” refers to Dante’s inferno, which Count Ugolino starves to death after being locked in a tower for treason. “Broken Coriolanus” is a Roman character in a Shakespeare play who turned his back on his country. Both Count Ugolino and Coriolanus are examples of outcasts.
     The final stanza of the poem has Italian which alludes to Dante’s inferno. The Fisher King sat upon the shore and fished. We learn that he has the Holy Grail all along, but because he’s wounded, he can’t use the powers of it to revitalize the land. The purpose of the grail is to keep the land alive.  The allusion to the song London Bridge is all about WW1 where London was left in chaos and in a waste land. Shantih is an onomatopoeia that’s supposed to sound like rain. It’s supposed to bring hope. The poem ends in an uplifting way that is different than much of the poem. It ends with giving us hope that everything will work out.

Part 4: Summary: Death by Water

     The fourth section of the Waste Land is the Death by Water. The major theme throughout this section is the importance of water. This section, having the turn, moves from having a lack of water (Waste Land), to having possibly too much and having it be ‘death by water’. Quite frankly, I’d rather have too much water than none at all. Water provides life, without water, you have nothing.       
     Phlebes the Phoenician, starts to drown and starts to pass his age and youth. The poem hints that he could possibly be dead – “once handsome and as tall as you” but it doesn’t confirm it. It’s weird that earlier the people were so distraught over not having any water and the land being ‘waste’, but now we’re concerned over having too much, too much life, too much hope for life. There’s a connection between the death and life. Death, being the waste land above and life or living dead is more underwater. Without water, you are hopeless – you can’t create without it, you are stuck at a standstill of misery (kind of like Sybil, old but never dying). The irony in this section goes back to the very first line of the entire poem – SPRING. Spring, like water is a creation of life, but in this poem spring season is considered bad and water is deadly.

Part 3: Explication: The Fire Sermon

     The third section of The Waste Land is called the Fire Sermon, which is something a Buddhist councils his followers to conceive an aversion for the burning flames of passion and physical sensation, and thus live a holy life, attain freedom from earthly things, and finally leave the cycle of rebirth for Nirvans. This section is about LUST vs. LOVE.      In the beginning of the first sestina, the narrator talks about the river –“the river tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymhs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.” The song refers to a marriage song of nymphs that are described as ‘lovely daughters of the flood.’ The land is brown, deserted, marking the waste land. The nymphs are gone – the river gods have departed leaving it with a lack of life. “The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends or other testimony summer nights,” all of these things would mean that there’s life still present at the river. There’s no garbage, nothing left forgotten, no sign of human life. The psalmist describes a weeping for their land – “by the water of Leman I sat down and wept…” The poem, To His Coy Mistress is alluded to from the line “but at my back in a cold blast I hear.”--- (poem) ‘but at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
     The ‘gashouse’ in London is their major source of power- it’s smutty and doesn’t help their ‘wasteland’. “While I was fishing in the dull canal” gives the narrator, or the Fisher King, more of a well-rounded atmosphere. “Missing upon the kind my brother’s wreck and on the king my father’s death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground and bones cast in a little low dry garret.” People are dead on the side of the trenches – the Tempest is referred to again.
     “Twit twit twit jug jug jug jug jug so rudely for’d Tereu” is the nightingale song that sets up the third part of this section. The nightingale song, like in The Fire Sermon, is hinting at a rape – “rudely forc’d”. A woman wouldn’t be singing to this however, but more yelling or screaming.
     In the Unreal City of London, a Smyrna merchant ‘with a pocket full of currents’ tries to seduce the narrator, the Fisher King by asking him to lunch and a weekend away in Metropole. The merchant doesn’t even know the narrator yet tries to seduce him anyways - theme of lust vs. love. Taro cards are present again; like in the first section of the Waste Lands it foresees something, and in this instance it’s the merchant. The merchant seducing the Fisher King alludes to Dante.
     The next speaker is Tiresias – he’s a blind seer like the fortune teller earlier on in the poem. He talks about his apartment – and then about a man who arrived at a woman’s house. After the meal ends, the man assaults her as she is not able to put up any defense – she was drugged making her weak and tired. He rapes her willingly and again refers back to the theme of lust vs. love where there is obviously no love present at all. The man is spiritually dead and the woman in a way is too – “Well now that’s done; and I’m glad it’s over.” She accepts it and doesn’t seem to feel…anything that a normal person would. Perhaps living in the Waste Land people were just okay with the things going wrong with and around them.
     The final part of the section has a setting of a lower class fisherman lounge probably sometime in the afternoon where music is being played. The song essentially sums up all of what was discussed throughout this section – the river that ‘sweats oil and tar’, the rape and the overall theme of lust vs. love. “Weilalala leia Wallala leialala” is used to show when someone is crying. Dante is referred to “Richmond and Kew undid me” – (Dante) ‘Siena made me, Maremma unmade me,’ a reference to her violent death in Maremma at her husband’s hands. “Burning burning burning burning” alludes back to section 2, the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (BUT the line isn’t quoted from it). The song is used to bring everything together.

Part 2: Summary: A Game of Chess

     Check mate. A game of chess is a power struggle over who can capture their opponents King first. Like in chess, this section is about the struggle of relationships. In the first stanza alone, there are three failed relationships. From the line “The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble” – “From satin cases poured in rich profusion” we start with the first one that the speaker narrates. A woman is sitting in her Chair, which is capitalized – possibly meaning that she is royalty? The man with her hides ‘his eyes behind his wing’ so she drinks wine or ‘fruited vines’ to ease her pain of being rich and alone.      The second failed relationship goes from “Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes” – “stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.” Unguent, used in the text is a soothing preparation spread on wounds, burns, rashes, abrasions, or other topical injuries. Synthetic means fake, and so her ‘fake’ and strange perfumes that are in the air, and are ‘fattening’ the candles that are lit means that the perfume is dangerous, flammable, and probably not perfume. The smoke goes into the ceiling tiles, meaning that the candles are probably high up – torches! This alludes to the banquet given by Dido, queen of Carthage, for Aeneas, with whom she fell in love. However, the love between Dido and Aeneaus was definitely a failure. When Aeneas is fooled by a man who he believes to be a God, he leaves Dido to create a new Troy on Latin soil. Dido is shocked that he disappeared, and when he returns, she makes rejects him because he had actually thought of leaving her. After Aeneas leaves, she says that “Death must come when he is gone.” Their relationship fails.
     The third failed relationship isn’t necessarily a failed relationship, but a stolen one. Starting from the line, “Huge sea-wood filled with copper” to “and other withered stumps of time,” we are able to understand the happenings of what a ‘barbarous king’ does to a woman. We can feel the tone of the poem by using things like “sad light.” The “sylvan scene” is an allusion to a scene from an epic poem, Paradise Lost, where we are given a description of Eden through the eyes of the Devil. “The change of Philomel,” is an allusion to another poem by Elliot, Sweeney Among the Nightingales, that focused on a brutish modern man named Sweeney, that was in the company of disreputable women (nightingales) in a café and perhaps a brothel at night. Between the tone of the lines, the allusions and what they allude to, and the line “so rudely forced, yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice and still she cried,” makes it obvious that she was raped.  Elliot, using ‘nightingale,’ like he would have in his older poem, would have made it seem like having sex with woman was perhaps something easy – because they were disreputable and worked in brothels. However, in this instance, it wasn’t okay, so the ‘nightingale’ cried for help, when the people living in the ‘desert’ or wasteland didn’t care and ‘the world pursued.’
     The second part of this section is kind of dull. The man doesn’t seem interested in the woman or what’s going on at all. Their lack of communication backs up the idea of the lack of their relationship. The woman is asking the man to stay with her, she says her ‘nerves are bad’ – she’s nervous. “Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.” The woman is asking the man to speak of what he’s feeling, and when he responds he avoids the question in a way that he starts to ask what the wind is doing, or what is going on outside. The man continues to ramble on, and in the end says that ‘we shall play a game of chess," the game that would continue to be their relationship struggle.
     The third and final part of section two is about an underclass woman struggling while her husband is away and when he returns from war. Demobbed was a term used for when someone got discharged from the army after the First World War.  A man named Albert was one that get demobbed after four years. His girl spent her time at the bar, “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME” is a sign that the bar is closing – a sign that she’s there late. The woman’s friend, is telling her to smarten up and get herself together. Albert gave (his wife?) money to get new teeth, and while he was away she still hadn’t done so. She has a bad personal appearance that he ‘couldn’t bear to look at.’ Her friend, trying to convince her to get new teeth start to try to worry her – “he wants a good time, and if you don’t give it to him, there’s other will.” A good time meaning sex obviously, but if he thinks she’s hideous and is gross without teeth, than she’ll be left on her own. The woman however isn’t bothered by this and almost seems as if she’d be glad if someone else took him off her hands. She thinks to herself, that she’s only 31, has had 5 kids, and took pills to get rid of the last one. The ‘chemist’ or druggist told her it’d be alright, but she was never the same after. It seems as if she became bitter. When Albert returned home, they ate ham, which was a big thing because during WWI and the times after, it was hard to get and very expensive to buy – especially for underclass people.  The woman says goodnight to everyone she knows, and then kills herself due to her failed relationship.
     All of section two is about a lack of relationships or failed relationships. Most of the people in this section that end up having failed relations have a tragic end. Living in a wasteland, you’d need the people around you to survive. People without anyone felt that ending their lives were the easiest thing to do. Ironically, the couples and people throughout this section played minor chess games with each other, but in the end, they didn’t really want to play at all.

The Burial of the Dead

Part 1: Explication:
    
     Part one of the poem, The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, is symbolic to a book of prayer known as The Order for the Burial of the Dead that contains different parts of the bible. At the start of the poem we are immediately placed in London where “April is the cruelest month.” April, usually known as a lively month is in the season of spring where everything grows and blooms.  It’s ironic that they use April instead of a winter month that would usually represent dying or death. In this poem however, the winter months “kept them warm”.  The first four lines of the poem allude to the first few lines of the Canterbury Tales, ‘when April with his showers sweet with fruit the drought of March has pierced unto the root, and bathed each vein with liquor that has power to generate their inn and sire the flower.’ The poem, alluding to the tales, alludes to it in more of an opposite way. Instead of spring bringing showers and rain that would help the land, spring is known as the cruelest month probably hinting that there is little or no rain. The land that is now a ‘wasteland’ wouldn’t grow or want thing to grow there.
     Speaker 1 is an old German woman who starts talking in line 8 of part one that reads, “summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee”. When talking to her friend in the ‘Hofgarten’ she tells him/her that she is not a Russian woman at all, but is in fact a true German from Lithuania. The rest of the stanza from there is about the old lady reminiscing over past times. She talks about sledding with her cousin as a child, and from that we learn that her name is Marie. The old woman talks about her and her cousin sledding in the mountains because she felt ‘free’ in her youth. This is important because youth doesn’t last forever – when you are young you have the freedom to do almost anything because your body allows you to, but as you age your body starts to refrain yourself from doing some of these things – you start to lose your freedom. She connects sledding in the mountains to her freedom and youth.  The last line of the stanza represents her age and the death of the day at night. Reading and going south in the winter are general things people do as they get older – she has lost her youth, and has become a stereotypical aged woman.
     The second stanza starts out asking “what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” when oddly enough their parts are technically in the wrong order – roots shouldn’t clutch what branches grow, but branches should clutch what roots grow because branches grow from roots. The ‘son of man’ is an allusion to Ezekiel chapter 2 which is presented by, ‘ in the valley of dry bones, God asks Ezekiel, “ Son of man, can these bones live?” and is answered, “O lord god, thou knowest.”’ This connects to the death above ground – the valley of dry bones. The connotations of bones can perhaps be meant in a literal sense of people dying or that are dead. It could also be meant in a way that bones are the bones of the earth – and that the earth will persevere no matter what. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” is an allusion to Sibyl because she asked for a long life, but forgot to ask for long youth. She would no longer be able to do anything because she’d be a shriveled up woman who continued to live miserably.
      The second speaker, also a woman, starts talking midway through the second stanza in German, which translates into, “ fresh blows the wind to the homeland, my Irish darling where do you linger.” It alludes to Tristan and Isolde, a man that was sent to escort the princess back to his homeland for his king. However, they fell in love with each other on their way back, and because she was meant for Tristan’s king, their love was forbidden. They lacked a true relationship that they could have given each other, and because they could not be together, they committed suicide. The Speaker of this part, called hyacinth, is flower that grows in the spring between April and May, which are known as the cruelest months. The hyacinth that grows in what is insinuated to be the deadliest months are flowers for the mourning (because West Wind killed Hyacinthus with a discus because of all the attention he was getting from Apollon and Zephyrus. Apollon then transformed the dying youth into the flower, the hyacinth, which from there became the mourning flower). Both situations between Tristan and Isolde and Apollon and Hyacinthus are examples of the fail or lack of love.
     The third speaker, Madame Sosostris, is fortune teller in Europe, “the wisest woman in Europe, with a wicked pack of cards,” (tarot cards). “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!” is a reference to the Temptest, a play from Shakespeare. In a ship wreck, two lovers die, another example of failed love. Belladonna refers to nightshade that is a deadly poison that is usually put into drinks, or put on the ‘rocks’. “Fear death by water” is a very dull phrase because we’re not sure if Sosostris is saying be afraid of too much or too little water – she’s foretelling something.
    The unreal city, London, has an interesting phenomenon that some likes to acknowledge that people cross the London Bridge and pass St. Mary Woolnoth on their way to the city. “I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,” this is an allusion to Dante’s inferno. Dante describes the people in limbo because they lived without praise or blame or didn’t know the faith. The people, who did know the faith or did live in praise or with blame, didn’t live in limbo so they were able to sigh and exhale in relief. “That corpse you planted last year in our garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” This is hinting that a year ago, a body was buried probably in the spring, because that’s the time that things bloom – also die.
     If the poem was to have a fourth speaker, it would start with, “There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, ‘Stenson!’ and then would continue to the end of the last stanza of the section. Here we are not sure whether or not this is the narrator of the poem or a whole other speaker. We aren’t given specific characteristics or names so we are left to question.

Things that will reappear: The Waste Land – Holy Grail, lack of: Water, spirituality, war, history (repeating itself), water, tarot cards, failed/lack of relationships.

Question: Second Stanza: “Son of man – and the dry stone no sound of water,” is that people questioning whether or not God is there? The land is a waste land, and so maybe they would believe that God would fix it, and because they haven’t, they question his existence. Lack of spirituality?

The Wasteland

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.   

Nani Explication

 

     The poem Nani, by Alberto Rios, is a very personal poem about the author himself. In 1952, Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born on the American side of the city of Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border. As a child he spoke both the English and Spanish language, and the poem shows his multicultural upbringing. Because he was punished in school for speaking Spanish, he slowly started to lose his ability to speak Spanish. His poem Nani describes an encounter with his Spanish speaking grandmother and his inability to communicate with her. Through body language, food, and culture, they find ways to understand each other without the use of words.

     Nani is written as a sestina. A sestina usually consists of six stanzas for the body of the poem, with each line ending in one of six chosen end words. The poem ends with three lines called an envoi, which includes the same repeated end words. The peculiar thing about Nani is the fact that it instead of six stanza’s, it only has three (two stanzas and one envoi). By only using three stanza’s it backs up the theme of the poem – the lack of communication between the boy and grandmother. The form of the poem is in a way dominated by the lack of communication between the two characters - the stanzas shrink. The poem has two stanzas, which could be one for each character, and because they are separate or split, it shows the lonesomeness between them.

     The six end words are crucial to the flow and meaning of a sestina, and in the poem Nani, it utilizes the words “serves, me, her, words, more, and speak”. The word SERVE can be seen as someone who serves someone else or someone who offers help. In the poem, the grandmother serves her grandson “sopa de arroz” showing her culture and her care she has for him. “ME” found him to be embarrassed and discomfited by the fact that he felt that he wasn’t able to give something back to his grandmother. “HER” is used throughout the poem as a form of communication and for the boy to simply watch his grandmother be, “I watch her,” “looks at me only with her back,” “I tell her I taste mint, and watch her speak smiles at the stove.” WORDS is one of the main parts of the theme – the idea that neither character has the words to speak or express the importance of one another to each other, “I own no words to stop her.” The word MORE is used in the poem to mainly provide us with an example of how the grandmother and grandson communicate – with food and culture. The grandmother, as most grandmothers would do, feeds and spoils her grandson. The boy feels so much love towards his grandmother that he wouldn’t dare to stop her. Finally, the word SPEAK. The importance of speak is the boys loss of his Spanish culture, he can no longer speak it or understand it, which provokes different unsettling feelings when he’s with his grandmother. 

     The poem Nani has a tone of love and sadness. The two characters love each other very much, but the boy feels like he’s allowing his grandmother to serve him in a way that he cannot return her favor. However, the boy understands that her serving (especially family) is the “tremendous string around her, holding her together.”  He’s upset that he cannot communicate with her especially with the age she is at, “I wonder how much of me will die with her, what were the words I could have been, was. Her insides speak through a hundred wrinkles, now, more than she can bear, steal around her, shouting.” He fears that he’s running out of time to rebuild his communication of words with her. He loves her so much that he questions how much of himself he will lose when she’s not around any longer.