This is not our first encounter with “Death by Water.” “The Burial of the Dead” begins with “April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land.” Spring’s rain breeds life out of decayed crops, but also out of the struggles of winter and war. Both in the poem and in the greater scope of culture, water is seen as necessary for spiritual renewal and cleansing, physical sustenance, and the regrowth of nature. The Tempest is mentioned throughout the poem and even its title reveals Eliot’s narrative journey. A tempest is a violent storm or an intense turmoil, its root “tempus” meaning time or season. The idea of a tempest itself is a violent and unforgiving turbulence which eventually ends in peace, but not without ravaging disaster. In a tempest, the water known for renewal, rebirth, and the essence of life is a force of violence. In the play, The Tempest, Ariel consoles another character about the believed loss of his father to drowning, saying, “Full fathom five thy father lies;/Of his bones are coral made;/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange.” By emphasizing that the father will remain he has just changed to become one with the sea, Shakespeare frames death by water as a spiritual shift instead of an end. Then, back to Eliot, Madame Sosostris twists this line from The Tempest when she reads the card titled “the drowned Phoenician Sailor,” says “Fear death by water,” and reminds the narrator of the line “Those are pearls that were his eyes.” Here, she does not see death as a spiritual transformation, but a loss of humanity which should be feared, emphasizing the pearl eyes as a sign that the sailor’s soul has been lost. Madame Sosotris, as sourced from Huxley, lives under several disguises, though, as a man pretending to be a woman and a poser pretending to be a prophet. Thus, Eliot frames Madame Sosostris as a false representation of the cycle of life, so that he can correct her skewed perception which is widely held by society. Here, death returns to the title but it has changed from “Burial of the Dead” to "Death by Water.” In the first section of the poem, “the dead” were given their own identity, but by this section it has become “death,” a word less connected to the people and more to their state. In the Corinthians, we see the more traditional image of water as spirituality. However, all the other referenced sources show water as death, less as a continuation of the natural cycle and more as a violent and inevitable force. <br /> In these sources, there is a recurring theme of ships being struck head on right before reaching their destination. In The Life and Death of Jason, the characters are spared and turn back, but they do not reach their destination. For Ulysses, he survives his journey and returns home safely to his family, after losing his shipmates to the sea and other challenges. In Dante, right as the characters can see land ahead, a “whirlwind struck the ship head on” and “the sea closed over us.” Eliot’s shift from water as a symbol of rebirth/life to a symbol of death is a continuation of the off-beat nature of the poem, and the awareness versus the denial of one’s fate.

The Waste Land is a comedy. With foundations built by Shakespeare and a surplus of references intended to make readers go down rabbit holes that not even Eliot understands, the melodramatic title is only a mask poking fun at drawn-out analyses of a decaying world. The story of Tristan und Isolde is strikingly similar to that of Romeo and Juliet (though Tristan und Isolde came first, Shakespeare seems to have been influenced by it) and the line “Those are pearls that were his eyes” comes from a moment in Shakespeare's Tempest. Shakespeare was known for writing comedies disguised as tragedies, or sprinkling comedic aspects into a largely tragic narrative. So while Eliot may not have intended to write a wholeheartedly comedic piece, there is no doubt that his work is at least a tragicomedy. Eliot references hyacinths and the festival of Hyacinthia, where the first and last days are reserved for grieving Hyacinthus while the middle days are enjoyable festivities. This is a reflection of the structure of the Waste Land, beginning and ending with depressing images while the middle is a synthesis of playful images. Eliot does not use references sparingly. He includes Huxley, Loy, German quotes within lines 31-59 that come directly from Tristan und Isolde. However, when we reach the references to tarot, Eliot leaves us a footnote where he admits to a lack of understanding on tarot cards. Just as one might try to grasp at straws and find any plausible connections between the tarot cards they read and their own life, Eliot wants readers to deep dive into literary works. He hopes that they will overanalyze his references like Madame Sosotris does so for her cards, weaving each image through each other. The Waste Land is a tragicomedy, an analysis of our problematic world from a playful angle, toying with language, structure, and even the reader themself.

Last night’s sources contained a variety of references to light and darkness, cold and warm, and night and day. The connections between seasons, environments, and emotion are clear, but the meaning behind those connections is debatable. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot asserts that “April is the cruelest month” and “Winter kept us warm,” but the other sources seem to disagree. Chaucer and Eliot directly conflict in their first lines, as Chaucer writes “When April with its sweet-smelling showers,” immediately characterizing April as sweet, positive, and comforting, as if the rainy weather is optimistic instead of gloomy. In Rupert Brooke’s “Letters from America” an April morning is described as idyllic, used to reminisce about a beautiful past memory. Both Brooke and Chaucer have wildly different characterizations of April in comparison to Eliot, whose distaste for the month is powerful enough to be used as the work’s first introduction. Tackling Eliot's line that “Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow,” Eliot seems to liken the winter snow to a blanket which comforts the world, allowing people to forget their deepest struggles and grievances. Larisch, on the other hand, disagrees, saying that “There is no time so conducive to depression as the hours before dawn, but in summer one's worries fly before the advent of the bright new day, whereas in winter-time they are not so easily banished.” Larisch views depression as most prevalent in the darkness, before dawn, which is why she views summer as the more comforting season when worries fade away, while the prolonged darkness of winter makes it difficult to vanquish sadness.<br /> The many contrasts between Eliot’s characterizations of seasons with those of other authors seems to boil down to differences in emotions and the presence or absence of light and darkness. Ecclesiastes and Ezekiel do both frame light and darkness as positivity and negativity, respectively, but they both assert that light and darkness occult the same space, as if one cannot exist without the other. In Ecclesiastes, it reads “While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain,” referring to a happy time when no sources of light are darkened and after rain, there is light instead of the continued darkness of clouds. By adding the moon and stars to the list of light sources, along with the sun and light, the author asserts that there is always light in places associated with darkness (ex: the night sky still has the moon and stars). Additionally, the author believes that light comes after struggle. In Ezekiel, (“As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.”) the author relates a rainbow in a cloud to the brightness of the appearance of God. This symbol of clouds returns in Rupert Brooke “Letters from America,” as Brooke writes that “A cloud over the sun woke him to consciousness of his own thoughts.” Usually light is used to wake people up, but here it is the absence of light (or the darkness) which does so. In the sunlight one can continue daydreaming about an idyllic world, but in the darkness that is no longer possible. The passing cloud posed by Brooke reminds him of the approaching cloud of war that will dim the light of his current life. All the sources seem to have such different characterizations of seasons, weather, and light v.s. darkness. However, when we tie them all back to Eliot we are reminded of his theme of an off-beat world. Just as we connected his work to the syncopation of jazz music, where the rhythm is intentionally off-beat to emphasize unusual aspects of the music, Eliot intentionally shifts these fundamental themes of every literary work, framing them unexpectedly to emphasize the misaligned state of the world.

The change from "He do the Police in Different Voices" to "The Waste Land" is an interesting choice. The original version of the beginning of the poem has a more clear feel of the satire, with a title from Sloppy's actions in Our Mutual Friend, and a playful tone and passage of events. In the Waste Land, it is clear that Eliot is playing with the readers and societal expectations to a certain extent, but the start of his poem and the title of wasteland don't give off the same satire emotions. The first version of the poem combines m any different voices, not just from the reference to Sloppy, but also from the references to so many different works and the tone as a whole. I think that Eliot's choice to revise the poem was smart, as it has a more mysterious and alluring essence now, leading readers to really be able to dive into the varying messages of the poem

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word “wasteland” as a “barren or uncultivated land,” “an ugly often devastated or barely inhabitable place or area,” or “something (such as a way of life) that is spiritually and emotionally arid and unsatisfying.” However, the title of “The Waste Land” splits the word into two, leaving “waste” and “land.” How does this change the meaning?

As explored through “Le Morte D’Arthur” and “The Golden Bough,” “The Waste Land” explores several angles of how sterility and fertility affect both the inherent system of nature and of human culture. First, with the modern world approaching and a shift from farming culture to industry, there is a lack of production and fertility in crops which is perceived to misalign humanity, leading to sacrificial and sexual rituals described in “The Golden Bough,” anything to fix the “natural” flow of reality. Second, there is a literal decline in fertility, as World War I imposed a form of forced sterility on the population. Men went to war, resources to raise a family became scarce, and the birth rate dipped significantly. Third, there is a mental and creative sterility of sorts, where monotony sets in and people follow society, cultures begin to blend with globalization, and originality becomes less common.

All of these cases of sterility – sterile land, sterile people, sterile mindsets – contribute to the world becoming a waste land, barren and desolate of production. Interestingly, many of these new waste lands, created by this overwhelming rise in sterility, came to be in an attempt to be less limited. Urbanization and industrialization occurred as innovators strived to create efficiency with groundbreaking ideas, men went to war to improve their idea of the world, societies blended as they learned from each other that one is not confined to their own beliefs. The world prior to industrialization was uncultivated due to a lack of innovation, in the perspective of these inventors and explorers. However, the world after industrialization is barren and desolate due to a loss of the natural resources, in the opinion of those who reminisce about a simpler time.

Eliot balances the harsh impact of global sterility with the understanding that everything can be perceived to be a waste land. He intertwines religion, nature, sexuality, and the controversy of innovation, almost making fun of the way that the scale can fluctuate if seen from another perspective.

“The Waste Land” as a title separates “waste” and “land,” no longer one narrative where the capitalized “Waste” overpowers the “land.” Instead, both “Waste” and “Land” are given equal importance in the title, because they are equally integral aspects of society. Informed by so many different aspects, the title and the work suggest that the world always has and always will be some version of a wasteland, no matter the changes that occur.