Eliot's choice to mention the Thrush instantly stood out to me because the Hummingbird, which is the other bird he mentioned, has held significant meaning throughout The Waste Land. Similar to the Hummingbird which represents Philomela's lost but prophetic voice, the Thrush is introduced in Chapman's handbook as "This Thrush comes to us in the spring, when the woods are still bare, and lingers in the autumn until they are again leafless." This directly mimics how Eliot has discussed rebirth and spring's involvement with the cycle of death. The Thrush's voice is described as "not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequaled." This description of pureness makes it so the Thrush has a prophetic voice, nothing material, just pure. Especially as Eliot uses "Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop." The "Drip" refers to the Water that has been sought after throughout this segment of the poem, and the purity and saving quality of the bird's song. The thrush's song being described as "While traveling, the Hermit Thrush is not in full voice, and he who would know its song must follow it to the mossy forests, which are its summer home" connects to the journey in the poem. The travelers must follow something deeper to find real renewal, just like you have to follow the thrush to its true home to hear its full song. In Keats's Thrush poem, the Thrush's voice is again described as warm and naturally freeing from knowledge. "O thou, whose only book has been the light / Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on / Night after night when Phoebus was away" describes someone who has learned from darkness itself. The thrush says "O fret not after knowledge. I have none, / And yet my song comes native with the warmth." This natural wisdom without overthinking is what the wasteland needs. The thrush offers instinctive hope, not thought out hope. It just sings, and in singing, it brings the sound of water, the promise of renewal, without needing to understand or explain it.

The passages from 1 Corinthians about humility and connectedness directly parallel Eliot's "Death by Water." When Paul warns "let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall" and declares that "by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free," he establishes universal connectedness and equality. Eliot echoes this precisely with "Gentile or Jew / O you who turn the wheel and look to windward". Eliot directly welcomes all readers regardless of identity to recognize themselves in Phlebas's fate. The warning to "Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you" mirrors Paul's warning to those who think they stand. Just as Paul insists "the body does not consist of one member but of many," Eliot reminds us that everyone will rise and fall and pass through the stages of age just like the Phoenician sailor"rose and fell / He passed the stages of his age and youth" captures both the physical motion in the currents and the cycle of life which humans endure. The “wheel” reference suggests a constant spinning cycle, reinforcing that everyone will pass through youth and death. Eliot conveys the same message as Paul. Those who think they are above will fall, as we are all connected and destined for the same fate.

Eliot's choice to directly quote Augustine's confession, "To Carthage then I came," brings forth the full context of that arrival, where Carthage is described as a place "where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves." This directly relates to what Eliot has been showing throughout the poem, the degraded, mechanical relationships between men and women in the Wasteland. Just as Carthage corrupted Augustine to the point where his "soul was sickly and full of sores," the disesed relationships in The Wasteland also cause spiritual corruption, Eliot then follows with the repetition "Burning burning burning burning," directly referencing the Buddha's Fire Sermon, "With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire." Eliot's use of the fire insists that the people in the Wasteland haven't distanced themselves from their senses, and as a result they suffer. Eliot then uses another of Augustine's confessions, "O Lord Thou pluckest me out." Here Augustine admits that even though he recognizes how "those beautiful patterns which through men's souls are conveyed into their cunning hands, come from that Beauty, which is above our souls, which my soul day and night sigheth after," he still finds himself entangled in outward beauties, and needs God's mercy to repeatedly pull him free. By placing these two voices together, Buddha and Augustine, Eliot is suggesting that the people in The Wasteland are in need of saving. Regardless of the solution, whether it's distancing from their burning senses or God coming to pluck them. They must be saved from their unholy behavior.

I found it interesting that Eliot titles this segment of The Waste Land "The Fire Sermon," a name connected to an annual ceremony at St. Magnus the Martyr church celebrating how a fire in 1633 destroyed more than forty houses but didn't reach the church. The Fire Sermon became a celebration of spiritualism's survival in the midst of fiery destruction. In Eliot's wasteland, this celebration of spiritual survival is gone. Eliot tells a story between two individuals through the eyes of Tiresias, "I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives." Tiresias, being both man and woman, is the perfect tool for Eliot to capture both sides of the typist and the clerk's encounter. Tiresias witnesses and narrates a transactional encounter, describing the clerk as a predator and the typist as passive and defenseless. After the encounter ends, Eliot includes "When lovely woman stoops to folly," a line from a song in Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, which talks about how the only way for a woman to redeem herself and restore her honor is through death. However, the typist doesn't die; she just puts on a record and moves on. She doesn't even acknowledge the tragedy that she just experienced. Only after this scene does Eliot briefly reference Magnus Martyr: "where the walls of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold." The church stands as a pillar of spiritual beauty surviving amongst disaster. However, this religious symbol—which should be celebrated for its survival, as the Fire Sermon tradition once did—gets pushed into the background, becoming almost irrelevant, nearly drowned out by the atrocities of the wasteland. The "inexplicable splendour" of Magnus Martyr appears only as an afterthought amid the "clatter and chatter" of fishermen in Lower Thames Street. Where the original Fire Sermon celebrated spiritual survival, Eliot's wasteland can barely notice it exists.

Eliot's choice to use the exact line "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song" creates a contrast with Spenser's original description of Thames. In "Prothalamion," the Thames flows through a beautiful natural world where the banks are "painted all with variable flowers" and nymphs gather "violet pallid blue, The little daisy, that at evening closes, The virgin lily, and the primrose true" to create bridal decorations. This freshness and natural abundance is the complete opposite of Eliot's dystopian description, where the river carries only waste and the nymphs have departed. The Thames in these earlier works represents England's prosperity and unity. Spenser writes how the river created a sense of joy and nationality, flowing past "merry London" toward a "noble peer" whose fame "fillest England with thy triumph's fame." Carpenter describes the Thames as filled "with the sound of many voices," believing that all the different people in London regardless of occupation or status connect through the river. Even when Carpenter observes "The oval-shaped manufacturing heart of England lies below me," he sees industry as part of a vital, interconnected nation. The Thames unifies everyone standing as a symbol for how society relies on every member. Eliot contrasts this with Day's original: "When of the sudden (listening) you shall hear, A noise of horns, and hunting, which shall bring. Actaeon to Diana in the spring." Eliot switches "hunting" to "motors," transforming the mythological image into something industrial and artificial. Eliot’s suggesting how industrialization has aided in the creation of The Wasteland, and severed humans’ connection with nature.

In Eliot's quote "And if you don't give it him, there's others will," the speaker strips Lil of her self-worth and reduces her to a replaceable object. Eliot's utilization of chess imagery, paired with his connections to sources that depict violence toward women, suggests that relationships between men and women in the wasteland are purely transactional, with each individual in pursuit of their own victory. In Pound's "Blocked light working in. Escapes. Renewing of contest," chess is a constantly evolving strategic game. This mirrors how Lil can easily be replaced—she is valued only for what she offers, not for her inherent worth as a person. Middleton's "We must not trust the policy of Europe Upon a woman's tongue" reinforces this pattern of silencing and dehumanizing women. Women are deemed unreliable, just as Lil is seen as disposable. The quote "Divided from herself and her fair judgment, Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts" proves particularly revealing. Here, Ophelia's "fair judgment"—her ability to have rational thoughts—is presented as the quality that makes her human. Yet when men chose to ignore or suppress these very qualities in women, they reduce them to inhuman objects. This dehumanization allows men to justify there cruelty.

Throughout the sources we read tonight, there is a recurring theme of violence toward women imposed through romantic relationships. In Eliot's "A Game of Chess," perfume serves as a symbol that shifts from natural purity to artificial corruption across the works he references. In Paradise Lost, perfume appears in the quote "Fanning thir odoriferous wings dispense Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole Those balmie spoiles." Here, perfume is natural and pure, emanating from Eden's perfect landscape. This directly contradicts Eliot's description of perfume as "Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours." Eliot explicitly calls perfume "synthetic," creating contrast with Milton's natural description. This same corrupted use of perfume appears in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them." Here, perfume affects nature itself, making the winds "love-sick," which aligns with Eliot's theme of grief in The Waste Land. Later in the same play, "From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs... Antony, Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone, Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too." Cleopatra's perfume seems to brainwash people when they smell it, making them obsessed with her. In Baudelaire's "A Martyred Woman," perfume again appears "In the midst of perfume flasks, of sequined fabrics And voluptuous furniture, Of marble statues, pictures, and perfumed dresses That trail in sumptuous folds." Perfume exists in an elegant and extravagant context, but it masks the horror of the dead woman in the room. Eliot makes perfume fake and "synthetic" because it is no longer pure like it was in Paradise Lost. In Cleopatra it makes people lose themselves and obsess over her, and in "A Martyred Woman" perfume conceals death and decay. Since perfume is something associated with attraction, and both Cleopatra and Baudelaire's poem center on the death of women, Eliot demonstrates that relationships have become as artificial and deceptive as the synthetic perfumes.

In Baudelaire's "The Seven Old Men," the speaker becomes terrified when he sees seven identical old men appear one after another. He worries that this pattern will continue forever, as shown in the lines "Then, I thought, must I, Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself And his own son?" Baudelaire takes the usual symbol of the phoenix—which represents death and rebirth—and twists it into something horrible. Instead of renewal, the phoenix becomes a symbol of endless repetition that drives the speaker crazy. This negative theme of rebirth continues in Nerval's writings. He writes "How dreadful! Even Death cannot set them free, for we live on in our sons just as we have lived in our fathers." Nerval suggests that people never really escape their problems because they pass the same patterns down to their children. Therefore, death doesn't free people; instead, they live on through their children. Eliot connects this idea of corrupted rebirth in "The Waste Land" with Dante's Inferno. When Dante sees the crowds of souls in Hell, he says "I had not thought death had undone so many." Eliot uses this line but applies it to London Bridge, connecting Dante's vision of Hell to modern city life. This connection suggests that our world has become like Hell because we're trapped in the same endless patterns that Baudelaire and Nerval describe. This helps explain Eliot's line "'That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?'" The image stands out, clashing death with growth. Eliot is suggesting that what we think is new life or progress is actually just the same old problems growing again. The "corpse" represents how the past is intertwined with the future. Instead of real change, humans can't escape their past and are bound to repeat their mistakes.

The use of these lines from Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" - where the sailor misses and yearns for his Irish girl - sets a tone of grief and longing for the poem. Eliot's use of the Hyacinthia festival from ancient Sparta is interesting here. Hyacinthus was a beautiful youth beloved by Apollo who was accidentally killed when Apollo's discus struck him in the head, and Apollo then transformed him into the hyacinth flower - so Hyacinthus represents grief and transformation through death. In The Wasteland it seems the hyacinth girl almost has turned into the flower as she isn't dead but can't speak, trapped between life and death like the mythological transformation. The Hyacinthia girl describes someone else with "your arms full" of hyacinths - so this person is actually holding onto grief itself, the physical embodiment of death and loss. The hyacinth girl becomes speechless from being overwhelmed. The hyacinths being picked creates an important image because to have picked them is to have killed them, cutting them from their life source. This leads to the "heart of light," usually a moment of inner peace and spiritual illumination, being silenced by overwhelming sorrow. This progression of loss is then followed by "Oed' und leer das Meer" from Wagner's opera—meaning "desolate and empty the sea." This reinforces the theme of grief and emptiness from loss; the barren landscape reflects internal emptiness. Then, following Elliot’s theme of longing and grief, the reader is answered by Madame Sosostris—who, as Huxley showed us in "Crome Yellow" with his character Sesostris, isn't even a real prophet but a fraud, offering only fake spiritual comfort to the overwhelimg grief.

In "An Unusual Young Man," the emotional shift that happens with Brooke's friend—where his German memories "no longer brought with them that air of comfortable kindliness which Germany had always signified for him. Something in him kept urging, 'You must hate these things, find evil in them'"—mimics how Eliot creates a horrible description of spring which directly counters The Canterbury Tales' beautiful description of spring. Chaucer writes "When April with its sweet-smelling showers" and "bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid," in contrast with Eliot's "April is the cruellest month" and "the dry stone no sound of water." This is interesting because the spring in The Canterbury Tales correlates with the people's good actions of coming together for the "holy blessed martyr." A similar contrast is seen in the use of dust in Eliot's "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" versus the burial service where "I am dust and ashes; and again I meditate among the tombs, and I see the bare bones lie, and I say: Who, then, is a king, or a warrior..." In the burial of the dead, dust is seen as a uniting force since we all become dust, but Eliot writes that this unity scares us. There is alignment between Ezekiel with his writing "Son of man" and "your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols." This implies that the reader is in Ezekiel's wasteland, just as Brooke's friend now saw Germany as horrible because of the war. Eliot's opposing spring—which in Canterbury correlates with coming together for the holy martyr—and the fear of unity through dust, shows that we have created our wasteland. Ezekiel's hellish world was in response to sin, so Eliot's wasteland is created in response to moral failures.

I find Eliot's choice to title the poem "He Do The Police in Different Voices" very interesting. Just as Sloppy transformed the police reports into an entertaining story, Eliot is turning this regular night out into poetry. Eliot then chooses to follow the title with a quote from Heart of Darkness. Conrad's quote creates a major contrast with the immediate tone of the poem. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz's life is described as a sort of wasteland: "I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines." The cause of that wasteland being his immoral decisions. The contrast in tone acts as a way to highlight how the poem is recounting a night out, but it is still literary. As for the Sibyl, her "I want to die" line in Petronius's Satyricon reflects how her unhappiness is intertwined with her immortality. The fact that she's not asking to escape but specifically to die reveals how both texts view death as a sort of completion, making death a necessary part of life. The Sibyl’s entrapment in the bottle represents a rejection of wisdom specifically from the upper class. Furthermore, both Satyricon and Heart of Darkness put a positive spin on death. In Heart of Darkness, death becomes the key to knowledge. In the Satyricon, the Sibyl's curse reveals that without the possibility of ending, existence becomes unbearable, and death becomes an essential part of living a good life.

The definition of a Waste Land is an unused area of land that has become barren or overgrown. In From Ritual to Romance, Weston explores how the Grail legend preserves fertility rituals where the king's physical state reflects the fertility of the land. As Weston writes, "the condition of the King is sympathetically reflected on the land, the loss of virility in the one brings about a suspension of the reproductive processes of Nature on the other." Weston's analysis and the title of "The Waste Land" clearly overlap, because waste land means a land that has become barren, which mimics the way Weston wrote of how the king's physical condition would make the land become barren. However, where the right question can fix Weston's Waste Land, Eliot doesn't offer a direct solution to his Waste Land. Malory's Waste Land is rooted in human sin and moral transgression. When King Hurlame improperly uses the sacred sword, it creates "great pestilence and great harm to both realms," demonstrating how individual moral failure can corrupt the natural world. Like Weston's model, "the loss of virility in the one brings about a suspension of the reproductive processes of Nature on the other," but Malory's version requires divine grace through Christ's blood rather than ritual questions for restoration. Finally, Frazer's waste land connects to seasonal changes, specifically tying in the rituals that ancient peoples performed to control natural cycles. As Frazer explains, "they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the earth to grow." For Frazer, the waste land represents the inevitable death phase in nature's cycle, which human ritual could help overcome through magic assisting the dying-and-rising gods. Eliot's Waste Land mimics these three kinds of waste lands,but provides no direct solution unlike these other works that each offered clear paths to restoration.