For the first time, Eliot uses the "I" pronoun without the mention of another (Other instances of "I" are always followed with mentions of "he," "she," etc)."The Wasteland" is in a way, a game of cat and mouse between Eliot's toying of pronouns and the reader attempting to keep up with his antics. In fact, Eliot often utilizes the ambiguity of the pronouns to reference multiple persons, myths, and genders simultaneously, creating cyclicalities and contradictions within pronouns that are traditionally anchored in one person. I am intrigued by Eliot's sudden pivot, which can be paralleled to the volta of a sonnet. I believe the shift to the first person invites a shift into pensiveness. As Lauren mentions, the characterization of Buddha as "the Fisherman who draws fish from the ocean of Samsara to the light of Salvation," further reinforces Eliot's message of reflection. Thus, Eliot paints the final stanza as the shift from the rest of the winding poem, allowing for the narrator — either Tiresias, Eliot himself, or another "third person" (syndrome)— to reflect on the poem's conclusion and wrap up his thoughts

I am intrigued by Eliot’s questioning of the third person to walk alongside the narrator and the “you.” Now commonly coined “The Third Man Factor,” the phenomenon has various, occasionally contradictory connotations across cultures. Given the reader’s individual experiences and cultures, they may interpret this portion of the poem completely differently than another.

This idea of an extra person was first popularized in Shackleton’s description of his epic trek to Antarctica. He wrote, “When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us … it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.” Both of Shackleton’s companions agreed, and he deemed the topic “a subject very near to our hearts.” It is clear that the explorer had a very fond view upon the anonymous figure, believing it to have been God, or a holy figure that had been walking alongside them. This interpretation is also supported by the Indian legend, which presents Lord Vishnu, the amiable deity of preservation, as the person lurking within the shadows. Indeed, I also gravitated toward a more religious interpretation when initially reading the poem.

However, other accounts such as Percival's story cast the presence of the mysterious figure in a darker light. The mysterious black hand that Perceval must defeat is actually the Devil, the opposite of Shackleton’s vision and Lord Vishnu. Moreover the “weird effect of shadow” in Dracula turned out to be an inhuman figure, again highlighting the contrasting interpretations.

“Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees” is a melodious respite from Eliot’s description of death and barrenness throughout The Wasteland. For much of “What the Thunder Said,” the narrative circles around the dearth of water and life and the ultimate consequence of death. Even throughout The Wasteland, references to nature often come in the form of allusions to legends and myths, and not actual animal or tree species. However, in this line, Eliot breaks the precedent, mentioning both “pines” and the “hermit thrush.” Eliot first heard the hermit thrush in Quebec County, which he deemed to have a “water-dripping song.”

First, the “thrush” alludes to a previously mentioned source, Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Whitman writes, “The hermit … sings by himself a song … out of the cedars and pines.” As I previously mentioned in an annotation, Whitman’s poem is a pastoral elegy, thick with death, grief, and tragedy following the death of Lincoln. However, Whitman’s use of nature also gave the poem a sense of renewal. Thus, by alluding to Whitman’s hermit thrush, Eliot plants the seeds of renewal and redemption in the similar dark context of death. Indeed, while its call is viewed as pure and soft, All About Birds describes the thrush’s song as “beautiful,” yet “haunting.”

Another connection is to John Keats’s letter “What The Thrush Said.” Interestingly, Keats describes the thrush simply as an observer. While the bird plays no part in the poem, Keats writes that “the thrush said I was right.” This adds an interesting dynamic to the thrush in The Wasteland not as a central character, but as an observer, or possibly a voice of musicality we hear within the language.

Last year, Stephanie argued that Eliot’s cutting out of much of Phlebas, the Phonecian sailor’s, story caused the poem to be much more impersonal, and focused on the brevity and aftermath of death. I strongly agree with Stephanie’s point, and half-wish that Eliot kept some of the omitted narratives. Indeed, the published version lacks the humanization and charm of Phlebas as a full, dimensional character; the reader knows not of his “foolish, impersonal, innocent or gay” personality. Instead, we learn the fate of the sailor introduced two parts ago grimly. This brevity, however, fits well with the descriptions of death which follow, such as “picked his bones in whispers.”

I am also curious about Eliot’s inclination to fully delete Phlebas from the poem. He is one of the few named characters that reoccurs throughout multiple parts of the poem and represents a strong thread of the story that the reader can follow.

Highlighted by grim images of “the river” sweating “oil and tar” and “broken fingernails of dirty hands,” there is little positivity within the images of “The Fire Sermon.” Thus, the repetition of “Weialala leia/Wellala leialala” may be viewed as a respite from the negativity. The lines allude to Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and are taken from the song of the Rhinemaidens. Indeed, the seemingly meaningless lyrics provide gentle, rhythmic lines that intriguingly contrast Eliot’s more serious verse. However, one must also take into consideration the thick irony of the laugh. In fact, the second instance of the Rhine daughters' “Weilala weialala” laugh was a response to Siegfried’s decision to accept the curse, and thus his death. So while the laugh is initially introduced as cheerful, it also holds the heavy connotation of irony and mortality. Therefore, while the “peal of bells” may sound like a Rhinemaidens’ laugh, the resonant sounds are Eliot alluding to a curse, or a “denial of love” that has overcome post-war London and English society.

Last year, Annie mentioned that the laugh “is veiled by flirtatious and seductive laughters” and that this “forced seduction” reflects Eliot’s attitude towards women throughout the poem. While I do agree that Götterdämmerung is another example of a man not listening to a woman’s opinion, I am unconvinced that there is any “forced seduction” in the laugh. In fact, given the power dynamic, I believe that it is the Rhinemaidens who have power over Siegfried because they know his future. If anything, I believe that Siegfried’s demise is more so related to fate and curse, two recurring themes of the poem.

Taken at face value, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd” is a very strange piece to compare to The Wasteland, especially “The Fire Sermon” Section. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is a pastoral elegy written by Whitman to commemorate the life of Lincoln. Thick with imagery of flowers and songbirds and music, some may consider Whitman’s poem a stark contrast to Eliot’s. Indeed, while looking for connections, the obvious place to look was “The Burial of the Dead.” Eliot’s description of “Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing with memory and desire” are not far from Whitman’s “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d … I mourn’d.” So how does Whiteman’s work align with “The Fire Sermon?” I believe that the first parallel are the descriptions of the people. When describing “the violet hour,” Eliot limns “the sailor home from sea,” “the typist home at teatime,” and “the expected guest.” Similarly, Whitman describes “the workmen homeward returning” and “the infinite separate houses.” In both works, the poets manage to depict the masses of people with a curious hopelessness to them all. This sentiment could be because of the shared backdrops of war. Written near the end of the civil war, Whitman vividly depicts “battle-corpses … and the white skeleton of young men.” Eliot’s description of “white bodies naked on the low damp ground” in the aftermath of the Great War and in the deteriorating city shows clear connections. Whitman was a war poet. While The Wasteland was written after the Great War, it is interesting to view Eliot through the lens of a World War 1 poet, putting him in the company of Sassoon and McCrae. How might that change the way The Wasteland is viewed?

On line 176, Eliot references Spenser’s “Prothalamion,” What I find very interesting and slightly contradictory about this reference is that “Prothalamion” is a love poem, a rather sharp contrast to the scene Eliot paints in the opening of “The Fire Sermon.” In fact, many of the images directly clash. Spenser describes the “shore of silver streaming Thames, whose rutty bank, the which his river hems, was painted all with variable flowers.” On the other hand, Eliot depicts “the river’s” broken “tent” and how the “wind crosses the brown land.” The “silver” Thames and flowered banks are antithetical to the “broken tent”and brown land. Furthermore, it is the description of the water that differs tremendously. Spenser is enthralled by the color of white, especially in the setting of a wedding. Throughout his poem, he consistently references the whiteness of the swans and the purity of the Thames. Meanwhile, Eliot sees a “dull canal” with rats “dragging its slimy belly on the bank.” The only white he reveals is “white bodies naked on the low damp ground.” Eliot’s Thames is a wasteland.

I believe that Eliot sees Spenser’s work as quintessential England, before the deterioration of society and war that he consistently critiques. The swans and purity of old England still remain as a reminder of the presence of love. But the landscape that Eliot describes has been robbed of those values. What white had existed are now white corpses, abandoned by the riverbank, left to rot.

In a sense, Carpenter’s Towards Democracy is the middleground between the two. Written after “Prothalamion” and before The Wasteland, in the midst of industrialized England, Carpenter's work depicts the beauty of England and its cities, while also acknowledging “the belching chimneys, the slums … and blameless remote villa residences.” Carpenter declares that England is a great land “waiting for its own people to come and take possession of it” In Eliot’s reality, this has yet to occur.

I want to focus this annotation on one word in particular, that at first I overlooked: gammon. Taken at face value, gammon is a British term for a smoked or cured ham. Thus, it would be easy to not think much of the line: “Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, / And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot.” However, gammon also has two other definitions: 1. To defeat an opponent in backgammon, another board game which shares similarities to chess. and 2. To hoax or deceive. First, alluding to backgammon within “A Game of Chess” provides interesting parallels and reflections on what it means to be within a game. From Middleton’s play, we know that chess is strongly affiliated with seduction and lust. While this may be a stretch, I believe that backgammon acts as a contrast to chess as a representation of what society was before the War and deterioration of creativity and individualism that Eliot constantly references within The Wasteland. Chess is the younger of the two, and has a belligerent connotation (possibly in reference to The Great War), in comparison to the meditative nature of backgammon. To be engaged in chess is a cerebral battle, and in Eliot’s mind, England is losing. Moreover, in Sukhbir Singh’s journal article, “Gloss on "Gammon" in "The Waste Land", II, Line 166”, he mentions the importance of the characterization of the gammon as “hot.” Singh deems the gammon aphrodisiac, and believes that “hot” refers to the Duke’s “flaming appetite” and “hot lust.” Singh’s opinion fits nicely into the second alternate definition of gammon, which is to hoax or deceit. In this case, the unnamed woman in the poem has most likely fallen into her “flaming appetite” and participated in an affair. Singh believes that this lack of love is Eliot’s reflection of societal deterioration.

“A Game of Chess” begins by immediately presenting the mysterious protagonist, “she.” While alluding to Antony and Cleopatra and Philomela, we do not learn much about the mysterious woman within the first stanza of the section, beside her “burnished throne” and “glitter of jewels.” However, insight into her character can be found in the continuing pattern from the last stanza of “Burial of the Dead.” Again, Eliot heavily parallels his descriptions with those by Charles Baudelaire, this time, from “A Martyred Woman.” “In the midst of perfume flasks, of sequined fabrics … of marble statues … and wearing precious jewels,” writes Baudelaire. These images clearly align with the “glitter of her jewels” and “strange synthetic perfumes” that Eliot describes.

Baudelaire’s piece is a grim depiction of an uncensored, decapitated, and violated corpse, which the title proclaims to be a martyr. What is she a martyr for? While vague, I believe that the poet suggests that the woman is a martyr for the message on impurity and improper love that the poem manages to achieve. In other words, it was her death and her story that facilitated the creation of the poem as a warning for others. Thus, by drawing the parallels between the protagonist in “A Game of Chess” and the martyr, Eliot insinuates that the same circumstances apply to his character. While she is not yet dead, she could be trapped in “an unwholesome love, guilty joys and revelries with infernal kisses.” Indeed, the next stanza reveals that she is in conversation with a man, and her “nerves are bad.” Eliot’s allusion to Baudelaire could simply be a grim possibility to hold on to in the back of the reader’s minds to evoke tension. But as Part II continues, it might also reveal vital, and possibly unseen portions of the protagonist’s character.

I am very intrigued by Eliot’s allusion to Baudelair’s Preface in Les Fleurs Du Mal, with his finishing line “You! Hypocrite lecteur! — mon semblable, — mon frère!" This translates to “You! Hypocrite lecteur! — my second self — my brother.” This is Eliot’s first time directly addressing the reader. Yet, his address is obscured through his usage of French, a strange contradiction. Another complexion is added to this contradiction when taking the quote at face value. Any reader unfamiliar with French will read the line “hypocrite Lecteur” as “hypocrite lecturer.” Because a lecturer is usually a teacher, or in this case the poet, Eliot portrays The Wasteland as a lecture, and himself as hypocritical. What is he hypocritical about? I think Eliot realizes that while he writes and critiques about the “crowd” that “flowed over London Bridge, so many,/I had not thought death had undone so many,” he was part of that crowd for his years leading up to the writing of The Wasteland. If anything, a bank teller working in an office is the epitome of the inoriginality and deterioration of English society.

On the other hand, however, it is the reader Eliot deems a hypocrite, the same reader he calls “my second self” and “my brother.” Again, Eliot casts himself in the light of hypocrisy by relating to the reader. However, it is interesting for a reader to be directly called a hypocrite, and forces the reader to reconsider the previous notions and assumptions that they’ve pulled from the poem so far. Maybe, for examples, the readers themselves are the part of the “so many” “death had undone.”

The wheel is the Tarot card of cyclicality: the cycles of life, death, and rejuvenation so present within “The Burial of the Dead.” The man with three staves is a symbol of exploration — much of what Eliot intends The Wasteland to be for the reader — while also being associated in Eliot’s mind with the Fisher King, and his arc of rejuvenation. Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, and the drowned Phoenician Sailor are both cards of Eliot’s own creation. In his note, he writes, “I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience.” While this may downplay the importance of the Tarot cards, I believe it to be quite the opposite. In his note, Eliot is being sarcastic and playful. While the cards may have been fictionalized, their interwoven meanings, reappearances throughout the poem, and obvious association within Eliot’s own mind cannot be downplayed as Eliot tries to do himself.

Moreover, in class the other day, my group discussed a tension between the values and rituals of Christianity versus other cultures. I found it intriguing that this same conflict is woven within the history of Tarot itself. Weston discusses that while many of the cards are based on Sanskrit or Hindustani origin, figures such as “The Pope” suggest a colonization/conversion of sorts. What is the implication of these cards themselves having been heavily molded by English culture and religion to Eliot? Perhaps there is a power dynamic at play. While the speaker seems not to respect Madame Sosostris, her words do seem to strike him with unease, especially with the closing line “one must be so careful these days.” This also ties into the theme of other (unmentioned) Tarot cards, such as the fallen tower, as a commentary of the slow deterioration of English culture.

I want to focus this annotation on Rupert Brooke’s letter and the striking parallels between it, and The Wasteland. First, the letter describes a camping Englishman, inclined to music, who does not truly expect to fight in the battles to come. This description matches Eliot quite well, who was rejected from the American Army because of a physical disability, and turned to poetry in its absence. “Sat alone, looking at the sea,” both of the men are outliers, in the quiet away from true wasteland of war (The Letter also got me thinking that The Wasteland could also refer to No Man’s Land between the trenches during the Great War, where not even the hints of life could begin to bud)

Brooke’s letter also describes that “a thousand little figures tumbled through his mind.” As touched upon in the reading from two nights ago, The Wasteland is a blurry collection of voices: only Eliot knows when the speaker shifts and the narrative warps. It is a poem made from the chaotic, yet measured excerpts of a thousand little figures and moments within Eliot’s own mind, transcribed onto the page. While this may be a stretch, “a thousand little figures” also reminds me of PTSD. How many soldiers felt the discombobulation of war and trauma after returning home? How many of them could have found comfort in The Wasteland’s powerfully radical format?

Finally, a few miscellaneous thoughts. First, Brooke’s friend “realized … that music would be neglected,” reflecting Eliot’s very similar theme to a Wasteland’s lack of spark and art. His friend also “felt the triumphant helplessness of a lover.” This reminded me of the fleeting introduction of the “we” pronoun. The “we” introduces a sense of familiarity, yet strangeness as the reader can only speculate to whom the “we” refers to. Maybe it is the speaker’s helpless lover. Maybe it’s a childhood friend.

I am very intrigued by Eliot’s working title for The Waste Land: “He Do The Police In Different Voices.” The title is a quote taken from Dickens character Betty Higden, who describes the fashion that Sloppy, an orphaned child that she took in, reads the newspaper. Dickens writes: “... Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.” We know that The Wasteland incorporates many excerpts from Eliot’s own life, however, the naming choice of “Different Voices” causes the reader to question the multitude of voices within the poem itself. How many of the excerpts are Eliot? When does the voice change? The choice of “The Police,” especially in relation to Sloppy, an orphan, also evokes a feeling of a power dynamic wrestling within the poem. Another layer to this power dynamic is added when examining the titles for the first two parts of The Wasteland, which the working title, “He Do The Police In Different Voices” originally encompassed. “The Burial of the Dead” is a section where the narrator has much less control, combating grand themes of nature, sickness, and death. However, “A Game of Chess” insinuates the message is something more methodical and controlled. These seemingly-clashing messages are a part of the “Different Voices” which Eliot suggests through the title, adding new dimensions and possibilities when reading into the poem. Interestingly, within the excerpt of the original manuscript that we read, Eliot leaves the “I” in the poem shrouded, as well as utilizing a mysterious “we” and introducing new names and locations constantly. This playing of pronouns and new names and voices is another implementation of his different points of views and excerpts throughout The Wasteland. Finally, “He Do The Police In Different Voices.” is slang. By incorporating this quote as the title, Eliot recognizes and insinuates his own use of slang and vernaculars throughout his own work.

Eliot credits Frazer’s “The Golden Bough” as an influential piece on The Waste Land. Partially named for the desolate land of the Fisher King, the waste land, dying and in need of a savior is immediately imprinted into the reader’s mind. So as Eliot begins with “Lilacs out of the dead land,” the reader is greeted with a surprise. In contrast to a wasting land, Frazer explores the vibrant and viridescent seasonal and vegetation cycles of societies past. Instead of decay feeding decay, “The Golden Bough” describes the death of gods leading into more life and the evolution of seasons. In fact, the vegetation god, Attis’s death and the springtime celebrations in his honor for the turning of the season mirror Eliot’s opening stanza. “April is the cruelest month breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.” The evolution from the “cruelest month” to “roots” and “desire, stirring” follow analogous arcs, the spiritual renewals of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris. Furthermore, with this subversion of the title’s expectation, Eliot begins the poem by setting a tone of radicality and freshness, all of which The Waste Land represents.

Another interesting note is in Weston’s “From Ritual To Romance.” In all three tellings of the journey for the holy grail, “the misfortune and wasting of the land are the result of war.” For me, this line adds another layer of depth upon the poem’s title. Taking this into account, Eliot asserts that the world and cityscape he describes is the direct aftermath of the First World War. Thus, “The Waste Land” is not just pulled from a myth, but a stark, real reality the entire world faces together.