The Wasteland by Dr Fidel Fajardo-Acosta - Assignment Example

 The Wasteland by Dr Fidel Fajardo-Acosta The First World War created an overwhelming impact of despair and futility to the 20th century urban life. These sentiments were eventually reflected in various ways in the literature of postwar years. In his 1922 poem entitled The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot incorporated religious symbolism, allusions, quotations, philosophies, as well as ancient myths being enacted in a modern urban setting.

He even made references to the works of Dante and Shakespeare to show metaphor and representation of what “spiritual dryness”, futility and redemption could mean. The poem, thus emphasized “themes of barrenness and desolation and portrays a dying society…” (Dr. Fajardo-Acosta, “The Waste Land”). It could figured out in the line that follows: And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,8; And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock9 Eliot noted that the fist line was part of the preacher’s picture of the desolation of old age, where “fear shall be in the way…and desire shall fail.

” While the last line gave an idea of a “great rock in a weary land.” He himself used these words to create picture of a dry, destructed, weary land, where trees could be no help to mankind and no water running through a vast dry land. He instantly formed an allusion of what a weary land looked like – a sense of depression and melancholy. And an “image of a society that feeds upon itself and also lies mired in its own waste” (Dr. Fajardo-Acosta, “The Waste Land”). Eliot have witnessed “the Great War” years and the prevailing sense of despair in war times as well as “modern culture having drifted away from it spiritual roots…loss of touch with cycles of life and nature” (Dr.

Fajardo-Acosta, “The Waste Land). The times where there were colonial and economic rivalries, formation of alliance systems, rise of nationalist sentiment, all of which in expectation to fight for their countries to gain freedom and progress.Mrs. Dalloway It was one morning in June when a small crowd gathered at the gates of Buckingham Palace. People from all walks of life piled up to see the Queen or anybody from the royal family walk past. While Emily Coates, who belonged to one of the crowd suddenly heard a sound of an aeroplane looked up and observed.

Everyone looked up. The aeroplane, coming over the trees letting out a white smoke from behind, soared straight up, curved in a loop, twisted, rose and it actually writing something – making letters in the sky. It released a bar of white smoke which curled and formed letters up above the sky such as K, an E and Y. People shouted an “E” while someone murmured “It’s toffee…” The whole world became perfectly silent. Meanwhile, Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War 1, was sitting with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia at the Regent’s Park.

While watching the smoke words melting in the sky, Septimus started talking aloud and pronounced that “Men must not cut down trees” and that God exist and there’s no crime. Lucrezia though she loved him, can no longer stand his revelations. He had grown stranger and having false beliefs that even his dear friend Evans, who had been killed in the war, was standing behind the railings opposite to him. He was having phantasm that he’ve seen a woman’s head in the middle of the fern and even argue with his wife, “Now we will kill ourselves.

” These ambiguous visions seem odd to people. Still, people did not believe his strange behavior for he had suffered from a traumatic stress brought about by the war. Work CitedDr. Fidel fajardo-Acosta. “The Waste Land.” World Literature Website. N.p., 2002. Web. 30 Oct. 2010.