The Waste Land

Importance of the water in the Waste Land.

From the beginning of the poem it can be seen that in the Waste Land, they are scare of life;
“April is the cruellest month”
With this first phrase at the beginning of the poem, considering that April is the “life bringing” month, we can say life is something the waste land does not have or does not want.
Water is a symbol of life, everythingwhich is alive needs to have water to survive; yet the inhabitants of the Waste Land fear to water, avoid it and just take the necessary to survive, but not to live. They look for shelter from rain.
“With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade”.

Eliot in “The Fire Sermon”, talks of a relationship; which also mentions spring and could suggest sex, therefore again life.
“Rattled bythe rat’s foot only, year to year…
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring”
Sweeny is an Irish working man and Mrs. Porter is a brothel keeper, the relationship is different than the other love relationships mentioned in the poem because this one has a sense of freedom, we could think that it is a prohibited relationship therefore it isbreaking with the routine of the Waste Land; it might also have love involved.
But this still gives a perception of fear and the relationship’s context is almost disgusting.

In “The Burial of the Death”, Eliot inserts a prediction, which may be the cause of all this fear in the Waste Land, and this belief that water equals death,
“I do not find the Hanged Man. Fear death by water”
This might bethe reason why they are afraid of water and tried to avoid it, Eliot then is using water as a knife with double blade; water causes life but also death, describing us the Waste Land, were you do not have any,
“I was neither living nor death”
This phrase is based upon two opposite things, but Eliot makes them one only, makes them go hand with hand.

Elliot also uses water as a symbol of desire,and the main desire of people in the waste land is to live, to be able to start leaving; water is presented in a very explicated way, not just in one occasion, but in several attempts.
“Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak and my eyes failed”
But people just let the chance go, the chance of having water, of having life.
Here we can see the person is actually outside theWaste Land because of the mention of “hair wet”, but then it drags you back by again a dysfunctional relationship; this can be said because of the lack of eye contact and the uncomfortably feeling with each other.

Later on, on “Death by Water”, a way of interpretation for the water could be that this one is going to fulfil the desire;
“Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And theprofit and the loss
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell”
By dying because of water your desire is going to be lost because you are going to have it become real, dying by water is going to give you life.

But we could think by this that it is actually impossible for them to have something more than an every day routine, it is impossible to go furtheraway; because when they mention water, it means they are seeing beyond and that is what they are afraid of, of the things they might find in reality, things they will find by living.

When water is being mentioned it means they are kind of dreaming on how life would be, as if they were no longer in the Waste Land,
“Burned green and orange, frame by the coloured stone,
In which sad light acarved dolphin swam”
With lines like this, Elliot presents a beautiful image with colour and life; but then he gets you back to the Waste Land, as if it was an impossible,
“Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues
‘Jug Jug’ to dirty ears”.
An unbreakable voice, someone crying, dirt; back to a desert, back to the lack of water.

Water is...