Gerontion by T. S. Eliot: Summary

At the beginning of the poem an old man is shown who is being read to by a boy. He starts drifting into his thoughts and the actual thoughts form the poem. His thought is fused with the description of Fitzgerald’s old age. He sadly misses the fight in the wars and regrets his living in the common place which is full of boredom. He goes on saying that there is a loss of humanity in the modern world. The truth is darkened and molded in any way one likes as per their wish. The divine judgment is there already for all the sinners.


T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

He is also not far from the judgment of God as he was removed from near the heart of Him. Because of the loss of his passion he was removed. He rejected his passion of his will because he did not want to see his passion getting corrupted. He states the modern condition of human being mechanized and running here and there with their cold heart. He confesses that he does not have any active participation in the hustle and bustle of the modern world so he has been living in a forlorn corner far away from the present world. He laments on the direction the modern world has taken to head.

His house is in ruins both literally and metaphorically. The reference to Greek tragedy — such as the ruin of the house of Atreus and to the decay of European nobility are important, because the ruin is blamed on the decadence of capitalism, the growth of a cosmopolitan money-culture without roots, identified by Eliot with his silly anti-Semitism with the Jews!

There is a Biblical reference. In Jesus's time, the people would say: "We would see a sign!" They were looking for wonders and miracles, but were not prepared to believe and to change their lives. Therefore the Word ("Logos", the Word of God, and Jesus Christ) remains hidden "in darkness". The word "Swaddled" may refer to the child Jesus swaddled in a 'manger in Bethlehem. In St. John's Gospel, the Christmas story is missing, but instead there is a metaphysical, very Greek, prologue explaining that Jesus was the Word of God ("Logos") made flesh (8). In this sense the Word "swaddled in darkness" (the infant Jesus) is a symbol of man's rejection of God's love. "Swaddled in darkness" also harks back to Conrad's Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. Thus, when Christ appears in all his glory he is like a tiger, a terrifying apparition.

Spring is "depraved May", a time of sexual stirrings. Though Christ is in opposition to the world, and the flesh, God's spirit is also present in the created natural universe, and above all in the spring in which Nature renews itself. Though Gerontion represents a decayed and dying humanity, he recognizes with alarm the terrible energy of that humanity when in the spring in which Nature renews itself, and the sexual power blooms. This world of his youth seems to be symbolized in the mysterious foreign figures who rise up like the ghosts from a Witch’s cauldron: Silvero, Hakagawa, “Bowing among the Titians”, Madme de Tornquist, Fraulein von Gulp. These have no special significance except that we notice Eliot’s preference for aristocratic women. Their invocation stresses the decay of aristocratic Europe. Europe has become a museum instead of real civilization. The wind once more rattles the door to disperse his memories.

The next paragraph is a meditation by Gerontion on his failure, and on all failure. How can we earn forgiveness? How can we redeem the past? History seems to have no pattern, but mocks man's decisions and plans. Vanity and ambition are history's chief guides. History like Nature is a blind force. She gives 'too much knowledge when we are too old to act; she gives us energy, ambition and confidence when we haven't the knowledge or wisdom to act. The result is that old men are angry and frustrated, all passion and no power, and young men are bewildered and fearful, all action and no knowledge. Courage can't save us — because we don't know what bravery is for; and fear stops us doing the actions which might bring good. Courage, heroism, may lead to "unnatural vices."

Gerontion then returns to the impact on this world of a spiritual awakening from outside. Christ the tiger springs “in the new year” and destroys the old life. He is now an old man at the end of his life “in a rented house,” with stiffening bones and an awareness of death. "Rented" is symbolic of the body, which is not a man's permanent home, but is only lent to him for seven decades, "We have not reached conclusion": we have come to the end of life but not to a satisfactory solution of our desires and aspirations. At this point Gerontion seems to address his remarks to a woman (present in his memories only) and the sexual content places the religious speculation of the earlier sections. Beauty is replaced by terror, terror not of old age's ravages (the physical decay) but terrors of the truth ("terror in inquisition") that when physical passion can no longer be expressed there will be nothing left of the love between them. He has lost his "sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch" and therefore can have no contact with a woman.

In the last section, he considers other old men of life and literature who have tried to revive in old age their sexual potency and pleasure. The principle reference here is to Sir Epicure Mammon in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist who, though old, dwells on the delicious pleasures of food ("pungent sauces") and sex, which he hopes to obtain through the alchemist's aid. Amongst the aphrodisiacs which Mammon's fertile imagination conjures up to "excite the membrane" is a room full of mirrors in which his naked mistresses will be reflected with "multiple variety".

At last human effort and energy are shown to be useless and futile. Human beings (De Bailhacehe, Fresca, and Mrs. Carmel) are whirled about in space with all the planets and stars "in fractured atoms" (another reference to Henry Adam's chaos). This mad whirling chaotic cosmos is vividly compared to a ship running round Cape Horn or "in the windy straits/Of Belle Isle", like feathers in the snow of the in the infinite spaces. Gerontion too has been driven by the Trade Winds of time "To a sleepy corner."

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Shrestha, Roma. "Gerontion by T. S. Eliot: Summary." BachelorandMaster, 6 Oct. 2017, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/gerontion-summary.html.