Exploring Eliot's "The Burial of the Dead" in The Waste Land
School
Cadi Ayyad University**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
ENGLISH 13
Subject
Arts & Humanities
Date
Dec 12, 2024
Pages
1
Uploaded by ChiefTitanium11848
Eliot's Poetry The Waste Land Section I: “The Burial of the Dead”Summary of the First Section of The Waste LandThe opening section of The Waste Landderives its title from a line in the Anglican burial service and consists of four vignettes, each presenting a different speaker's perspective. The first vignette features an aristocratic woman recalling her childhood experiences of sledding, asserting her identityas German rather than Russian, which is significant if she is linked to the recently defeated Austrian imperial family. She intertwines her reflections on the changing seasons with observations about her current desolate life, stating, “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”The second vignette takes on a prophetic and apocalyptic tone, inviting the reader to explore a barren desert landscape. The speaker promises to reveal something beyond the ordinary, stating, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” a line that inspired the title of one of Evelyn Waugh's famousnovels. This foreboding invitation is interspersed with memories of a “hyacinth girl” and a nihilistic realization the speaker has after encountering her, drawing on quotes from Wagner’s operatic adaptation of Tristan und Isolde, which tells a story of love and loss.The third episode presents a surreal tarot reading, including cards that are not part of a traditional tarot deck. The final segment of this section is the most dreamlike, depicting the speaker walking through a ghostly London filled with the spirits of the dead. He engages with a ghostly figure named Stetson, a former comrade, and discusses a corpse buried in his garden. This episode culminates in a powerful line from the preface to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal, which accuses the reader of partaking in the poet’s sins.
