The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Summary of Section I – Section V

The first section of 'The Waste Land' is known as The Burial of the Dead which refers to the burial of the dead, fertility gods in Frazer's The Golden Beer and the burial service in the Christian Church. In both these cases, death is followed by re-birth, but in the modern wasteland rebirth is very doubtful, and people live in a stage of life-in-death.


T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

The condition is presented through four scenes of The Burial of the Dead "The common note in all these scenes is fear; the contrast arises from the various attitudes towards fear. The theme is first stated in the famous opening lines, the comment on the cruelty of spring time, the pain of new life stirring after the torpor of winter, and we pass to a reminiscence of summer coming with a shower of rain, and then sunlight and an hour of casual talk in the Hofgarten at Munich". In the second scene we pass through Ezekiel's valley of dry bones and witness frustration in love in the episodes from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and the hyacinth garden. Then we are introduced to Madame Sosostris, the famous fortune-teller. Now we step in London winter. We see a crowd of people crossing London Bridge. They are slaves of time, each with his eyes fixed before his feet, watching the next step only. The poet recognizes one figure, Stetson, and then there is a conversation between them. From the reference to London, one may think that the civilization referred to is a modern one. But the presence of Stetson, who was with the protagonist in the 'ships at Mylae' makes this passage visionary and timeless.

The Game of Chess

The theme of A Game of Chess is the sterility and meaninglessness of life without love in the wasteland which have been presented through the portrayal of two types of modern women in different social circumstances. These are the only two scenes in A Game of Chess and both these scenes present the contrast between life in a rich and magnificent setting, and life in the low and vulgar setting of a London pub. We first see a woman who, surrounded by luxury and by art-works, is nevertheless reduced to shirking frustration. The horror of her condition lies as much in her burning need for love as in any lack of religious faith. In the squalid pub-monologue that follows, we see a lower class counterpart: 'a tragi-comic presentation of the brutalizing of a poor woman' life because of the gross indifference to her as a person. In these portrayals of women we notice that sexual passion without the soothing power of ecstatic love is the cause of suffering and tragedy. The objective correlative for this second scene of the poem is taken from Middleton's tragedy Women Beware Women. In this play a game of chess is played to distract attention from a seduction. Livia plays chess with the old widow, while her daughter-in-law, Bianca, is being seduced by the Duke, and the seduction is described ironically in terms of the moves of the pieces on the board. When one of the characters in the play says, "We shall play a game of chess," it simply shows their intention to carry on their unlawful physical relationships. Similarly, in A Game of Chess the game has been used as a ruse to cover up unwarranted sexual relationship which is indicated in the story of the violation of Philomela. The unlawful satisfaction of sex shows the seed of future tragedy in the play and it is also the source of disquiet to the individual self in the poem. It causes apprehension of some undefined danger, the premonition of the "knock upon the door" which is the symbol for death.

The Fire Sermon

The theme of this section is that passion and sensuousness human nature are the sources of misery and suffering in this world and Eliot finds a suitable objective correlative in the Lord Buddha's Fire Sermon. Lord Buddha tells his disciples and priests:

"All things, O priests are on fire ....... The eye, O priests, is on fire: forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by eye are on fire, and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant or indifferent, or originates in dependence on impression received by, that is also on fire.” "And with what are these on fire?" “With the fire of passion, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief and despair are they on fire."

The Lord Buddha tells us that passion is the source of suffering and evil in this world and a person can get Nirvana if he wins over passion. Eliot gives his attention to the theme of passion of sex in The Fire Sermon. He is also indebted to St. Augustine's doctrines. According to St. Augustine, sin is the source of passion which cause misery. Eliot is influenced by St. Augustine's analysis of human suffering as presented in The Confession and he has combined the doctrines of Lord Buddha and St. Augustine in The Fire Sermon. Eliot himself admits, "The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident."

The game of sex is played over and over again by the characters presented in The Fire Sermon and in this game the females are more less or passive and indifferent players. They surrender to sexual assaults because of their poverty, helplessness and miserable conditions of life. The poem opens with the Thames in winter, and the poet contrasts the defilement of its pure waters by modern nymphs and the heirs of city directors in the modern waste land against the idealized picture of the Thames during the Renaissance as presented by Spenser in Prothalamion. Then we meet Sweeney and Mrs. Porter in the spring. We are once again in London 'under the brown fog of a winter noon.' Here we are introduced to Mr. Eugenides, the homosexual Smyrna merchant who invites the protagonist to lunch with him at the Cannon Street Hotel. Now for the first time the poet identifies the speaker with Tiresias, the blind old seer who is a witness to acts of loveless sensuality between the poor typist girl and the young man carbuncular. The speaker now passes through the locality of happy fishermen who chatter merrily and play sweet music. They live by the river and the church. Then we are introduced to three Thamis-daughters whose song brings us back to the squalor and dirt of the Thames as presented in the opening lines of this section. It is the song of the Thames-daughters that the reference to the amorous affairs of Queen Elizabeth I and Leicester is made. The song of the Thames-daughters reveals that each one of them has lost their virginity. The section closes with a reference to Lord Buddha and St. Augustine who taught their disciples that the passion is the source of suffering in this world.

Death by Water

In the third section the possibility of purification of the soul lay in the release from the burning flame of lust through asceticism of Lord Buddha and St. Augustine. This section also describes the possibility of becoming free from the fire of passion, not by self-discipline, but by water which washes away all the stains of the body as well as of the soul. The death by water, 'with its suggestion of ineffable peace,' is another form of purgation. Here the Phoenician sailor is deprived of his lust for profit and loss and sensuous pleasures of the body by the currents which pick the lust from the bones of not only Phlebas but of all people, because he is all of us, the last line insists, making the identification with us. He reverses as the rhythm of his life as he enters the vortex.

What the Thunder Said

In this section the protagonist turns from the water that drowns in the last section to the water that saves. He attempts to achieve peace by coming under the shadow of religion, but even religion falls him as the commands of the thunder are violated in the Waste Land. The quest for salvation and inner peace have been expressed through three objective correlative, the Journey to Emmaus, the approach of the Chapel Perilous and the present decay of Eastern Europe. These three themes are but illustrations of one single theme; the falling down of the temporal world, and the promise of a revivification through the spirit. This section of The Waste Land marks a turning point in Eliot's work since the satire of the world is accompanied for the first time by a message of hope; the poem is no longer ironical, destructive, and negative. The relation between the scene of universal desolation, the symbol of the cock, the sensual symbol of the hair, the notion of sympathy and the religious exhortation at the end of the poem is made clearer by this remark.

The poem shows the way of release from the spiritual death and finds its solution in the hoary wisdom of India. The opening lines of the poem prepare for the Christ's crucifixion, then we see the agony of parched throated sensibility in the 'mountains of rock without water,' the nightmare reversals in the vision of the Chapel Perilous, and the Imagery of the thunder's message.

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Shrestha, Roma. "The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Summary of Section I – Section V." BachelorandMaster, 6 Sep. 2017, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-waste-land-summary.html.