Free Waste Land Essays: The Lifeless Land:
Length: 507 words (1.8 pages)
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The Waste Land: Lifeless Land
As The Waste Land begins, Eliot enters into the barren land, which the audience journeys across with the author through the course of the poem. "The roots that clutch" immediately evoke a feeling of desperation. Roots in the rocky soil Eliot describes are a base from which to grow; just as roots in plants gain nourishment from soil, these roots "clutch" infertile ground, desperately seeking something to gain from nothing. The question "what branches grow" suggests skepticism as to life's ability to survive in "stony rubbish," the waste that offers no forgiveness.
"You know only a heap of broken images" alludes to memory. Memory can be a composite of many smaller memories, creating discontinuity. "Broken images" are similar to the entire poem, which has a tendency to jump between snippets of different lives and desolate imagery of a desert waste. Eliot creates a memory lacking value for its indistinctness. Because only "broken images" exist, the memory itself becomes a waste. Just as life cannot grow in a barren land, people cannot be whole without coherent memories to identify with. The incomplete memory also suggests aging: as a person grows closer to death, all of the images accumulated throughout life gradually fade and break apart. Some things are forgotten, and others begin to meld together.
The audience is reminded again of the absence of life with "the dead tree gives no shelter." The "dead tree" can no longer offer protection as it once might have. There is no comfort in death, especially if after death there is no rebirth, or new life. "The dry stone no sound of water" provides still more images of a forsaken land. "No sound of water" is particularly important. The lack of water ensures the lifelessness. Life cannot exist without water; however, water can also destroy life. Eliot suggests that water cannot only provide life, but it can take it. Drowning is mentioned more than once in The Waste Land. This particular selection seems to require water for life. Later images of drowning, as in 4. Death by Water, are not necessarily suggesting the kind of lifelessness present in the desert imagery. Dying by water, a life-giving force, perhaps offers the rebirth Eliot seeks throughout this poem.
"I will show you something different from either/ Your shadow at morning striding behind you/ Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you." These lines point east, facing the rising sun. This alludes to Eastern philosophy, which Eliot explores extensively later in the poem. The importance of facing the rising sun goes beyond religion; it is a more pleasant image than the waste, it provides hope and looks positively at the future. However, Eliot wishes to convey emotions different from hope. Eliot offers "fear in a handful of dust," extinguishing any hope the previous lines may have evoked. The dust of the desert soil is infertile; no life can grow from such dry soil. There is finality in this line: no life can ever be brought to a dead land.
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