"The Wasteland"

Reading through “The Wasteland” once left me scratching my head. I’m glad I wasn’t alone. I pictured T.S. Eliot as this genius madman rambling on about things only he could possibly understand. After talking about it in class, however, I started to completely understand where Eliot was coming from. In fact, I sympathized with him. Everyone has those feelings of complete helplessness, like the world around you is different, foreign. But expressing these feelings is often taboo. The stigma of mental disorder is so powerful today that I can’t imagine how bad it was in the 1920s. Eliot’s nervous breakdown could have been treated today with psychotherapy and/or pharmaceuticals, but in his time, admitting himself into an insane asylum was really his only option.

I do believe that his mental anguish fostered a great masterpiece in “The Wasteland.” I wish we could have had enough time to discuss the whole poem, since I’d like to know what every line really means. Without knowing every part of the poem, it’s hard to offer too much literary analysis. One part I found interesting though, was the image of the approaching thundercloud. To me, that signifies the existence of a renewal and passing of darkness. He says there’s no sign of rain to come because in his depressive state of mind, that’s exactly how he feels: like he’ll never get better. But the fact he even bothers to mention this rainless cloud tells me that he knows the rain, or renewal, will eventually come.


One of my favorite few lines has to be:
And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The language here is so powerful and almost intimidating, but poignantly so. Now that I know this person speaking is acting as a guide, it makes it all the more telling. I feel like he’s gearing us toward a journey through hell, exactly what Eliot was experiencing when he wrote this poem. I can see why the poem made the impact it did. I just hope to have the chance to figure it all out sometime.