Eliot Views London Life example essay topic

Throughout his presentation of London and its citizens, Eliot creates a tremendous and oppressive sense of inertia and stagnation. He evokes brilliantly both the literal wasteland which World War One left and also the profound spiritual dissatisfaction which many at that time felt, as well as the need for a rebirth or resurrection. The first words of this section; 'Unreal City' convey perfectly the sense of awe and even dread with which Eliot views London life. There is something incredibly intense and surreal about this opening, which leads fittingly on to images of hell, war and dissatisfaction.

It is clear that Eliot thought much of life was going nowhere, with people, like water, moving but never reaching a true destination or conclusion: 'A crowd flowed over London Bridge' and he links this image in a dream-like way to Dante's reaction to the dead in limbo:'s o many, It had not thought death had undone so many " That the people Eliot is describing are actually not dead, makes this all the more haunting, as though London life is actually a living death. In fact, because Dante was talking of those who even in life had never really experienced anything, Eliot also conveys a chilling sense of dissatisfaction and isolation, with no-one ever really connecting to those around them:'s i ghs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. ' Into this bleak vision of loneliness, the brief excitement of recognising a face in the crowd 'There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying "Stetson!" ' is abruptly and disconcertingly wrenched into surreality again. With the incongruous words 'You who were with me in the ships of My lae!', both through the rather awkward and Latinate construction of the sentence, and through the reference to an ancient battle of 260 BC, we leap into the past without any explanation. This image does, however, link to the First World War and the camaraderie which sprung up between strangers fighting among the trenches. In a shockingly casual tone, the speaker then goes on to say:' That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout?' as though describing a bush of flower.

This memorable image echoes earlier ones employed by Eliot, which do indeed involve flowers:' April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land " They called me the hyacinth girl " With all these images, Eliot is evoking ancient fertility rite of rebirth and resurrection. In past times people would bury idols of their gods in the ground, in order for a new cycle of life to begin, and there is a strong sense throughout 'The Wasteland' of this need for rebirth of this need for rebirth to ease the spiritual desolation. The advice the speaker gives, of keeping the 'dog far hence' to prevent it digging up the corpse, also links to the Bible, when dogs were seen as an evil and destructive. In fact, by using the word 'nails of the dog', Eliot makes the source of destruction sound human, and implies that one's friends can interfere with the process of regeneration.

This profound sense of spiritual dissatisfaction, and the need for rebirth, echoes earlier parts of the poem, where life is shown as bleak and desperate:' What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow, Out of this stony rubbish?' Throughout 'The Wasteland', Eliot evokes people who have something lacking in their lives, like Mane who says: 'I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter'. This feeling of isolation and of something essential being missing is perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase - a heap of broken images, which implies we can never see the whole picture until we increase our spirituality. In this section too, when Eliot writes of the 'dead sound on the final stroke of nine', there is a lasting sense of hollowness and even of Christ's resurrection having failed. Finally, when the narrator turns to and abruptly addresses us: 'You!

Hypocrite lect eur! Mon semblable, mon tr " ere!' we are included in this haunting sense of boredom and spiritual desolation as though there is no escape. By echoing Baudelaire's 'Fleur de mal' both at the start and at the end of this section, Eliot captures some of that poem's intense dissatisfaction with life and creates a chillingly sterile image of London after the war.