![]() ![]() Eliot paints London’s commuters, the industrial workers traveling through the city as souls entering dante's hell. All profundity has been wrung out of the world, but the old stories lie beneath modern streets. The old stories are still there, but they mean less. Through the many allusions Eliot illustrates the cheapening of high culture, and the erosion of literature. He wanted some Capital ‘T’ truths but there weren’t any anymore. If we perceive the world as ordered then ordered poetry will be written and understood, but if the world is broken and disordered then disordered poetry will be written. In order to portray the crumbling world that he perceived, Eliot implemented an equally jumbled polyphonic narrative. In a world broken by war, changed forever by industrialization and urbanization there can be no clear, singular meaning. ![]() It contains sixty allusions to forty different writers and six different languages. “The Waste Land” is a collection of fragmented stories, voices, and settings. ![]() The world he saw was in shambles, both physically, spiritually, and intellectually. Eliot wrote “The Waste Land” a few years after the end of WWI while convalescing at the English Sea Shore after having a nervous breakdown. ![]()
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