The wasteland theme in American literature - Essay Example

The Wasteland Theme in American Literature The waste land is a critical work that holds significance in the influence of American literature. Eliot poses as one of the most creative authors of the century. The uniqueness of Eliot’s work is that its depictions add a vital substance to the society through the outstanding themes revealed. The most renowned poem of the previous century, The Waste Land symbolizes modernism. This is witnessed through its apprehensive usurpation of preceding texts in the literary tradition.

There is distinct self-conscious craving to be current, its desolate analysis of the current time as a post-lapsarian instant between a disintegrating past and an unsure future. Made from a collection of five divided poems, the over arching piece is, in poetic range and consequence, superior to the amalgamation of these parts. Eliot joins most of the themes and other techniques he had observed in his earlier literary work. The prevalent themes include love, aridity, sexuality, lust and living death.

The techniques involved are such as flow of consciousness, mythic allusions, the dramatic monologue, narration, literary, and historical. According to Eliot’s earlier writing’s, he targets the voice and vision, the analysis does not exclude other senses. When Eliot republished the poem in the form of a book, also in 1922, he supplemented the work with more than fifty notes. Among the notes, there were some of the notes targeting the reader to such sources as Scott Fitzgerald the Great Gatsby (1922) and Ernest Hemingway, The sun also rises (1926), the former for its managing of the of seasons, vegetation and morality in the society regardless of its repercussions.

The latter is critical for its elucidation of the love and divorce as well as their significant prevalence in London and Spain. Eliot’s reminder to line 218 helps describe the general unity of the work and provides a useful starting position for a serious and essential rereading of the piece by newcomers to the elegy and to Eliot. Regarding Eliot’s previous writings to hold fundamental basis, other critical work include “Tiresias,” he put down, “although a mere spectator and not indeed a ’character,’ is yet the most important grandee in the poem, bringing together all the rest.

” All the male characters turned out to be one; all the women, one woman, and the two sexes merge in Tiresias. What Tiresias observes, in fact, is the substance held in the poem. The poem’s themes of death, history and rebirth are depicted by Eliot in different ways. There are particular lines quoted by Eliot that depicts death. For instance, “The Burial of the Dead” and “Death by Water”. Nonetheless, death can also mean life. There are some rare occasions as depicted by the author where the observed death can result into life.

Similarly, the death of Christ resulted into redemption of the lives of human beings. Death also concurs with Emily Dickinson and Jack London’s “to Build a Fire (1908) involves a man encountering snow in his adventure. The man stumbles on snow and wets his clothes. Due to the cold weather, he resolves on creating fire to warm himself. After sometime he struggles but the burning leaves get exhausted and the cold overcomes him and dies eventually after avoiding the dog’s death as a source of heat for his hands.

This is death that is also experienced by the dog that runs away. Similarly, Bernard Malamud’s the Mourners also focus on the death and the associated themes that may contribute greatly to its occurrence. Kessler lives in a squalid condition and his house is filthy yet he pays his rent promptly. Due to Kessler’s bleak moods and filth the neighbour feels that he should not be amongst them. When frustrated by the landlord, Kessler cries saying, "Who throws out of his house a man that he lived there ten years and pays every month on time his rent?

’’ Kessler also adds bitterly, “What did I do, tell me?” this is frustration of a higher degree. Kessler cries until he finally dies. Eliot is also relevant in regards to history because in Kessler’s scenario, the majority hates him without reason. This is a common phenomenon. Eliot adjusts the poem thesis, claiming that in as much as things transform the more they remain similar. Eliot connects a sordid business between a typist and a young man to Sophocles through the figure of normalcy of events.

He swaps a line from other work, Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” with “the reverberation of horns and artificial objects motors”; Eliot invokes Dante prior to the modern- time London Bridge, busy with traveller traffic; he realizes the Ionian pillars of a bar on Lower Thames Street crowded with fishermen. The antique huddles over the medieval, rubs shoulders with the Renaissance, and crosses paths with the centuries to follow. History in the Waste Land becomes a smudge. Eliot’s verse is like a street in Rome or Athens where there are recurring history above the prevailing sequences.

Work Cited Eliot Thomas. The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Broadview Press, 2010 Fitzgerald Scott. The Great Gatsby. Washington DC: Interactive Media, 2012 London, Jack. To Build a Fire. New York: The Creative Company, 2008 Malamud, Bernard. “The Mourners.” American Literature Volume 2, William E. Cain, 2004. 870-876