The Waste Land Water Symbolism
Ξ September 21st, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Old School Papers |
Completed somewhere around May 2001 – was published, so don’t copy too closely
T.S. Eliot is one of the most studied poets of today (Murphy 250). His poetry is masterfully planned and executed, filled with clever references and multiple meanings. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 “for his outstanding, pioneering contribution to present-day poetry.” His “pioneering” works include “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Preludes,” “Ash Wednesday” and “Four Quartets” but his most widely analyzed, and probably most often misunderstood, work is “The Waste Land.” It is a poem that has baffled critics for its entire existence. It is inherently ambiguous and filled with paradoxical symbolism, but it does carry a message for the reader. “The Waste Land” is an intensely symbolic work, with almost every line up for a different interpretation by a reader. Throughout the poem, Eliot uses a number of reappearing symbols such as death, rats, bones, bells, towers and beds, to name a few, but his most frequently occurring symbol is that of water in all of its forms. Eliot purposefully employs an ambiguous water motif to make points about nature, culture, religion and life in general and about how modern man in his reactions to each has become a “wasteland” and needs to be reborn. (more…)