Very obvious parallel here between this line and "A noise of Hornes, and hunting, which shall bring/ Acteon to Diana in the Spring" from Parliament of the Bees. Except this time Eliot is modernizing this image and changing its meaning to demonstrate that modern society continues ancient patterns of sexuality and desire, but in a degraded, spiritually empty form. Eliot takes the elevated mythological scene and makes it deliberately ordinary. Instead of the heroic Actaeon approaching the goddess Diana, the narrative becomes Sweeney approaching Mrs. Porters. Similarly, instead of hunting horns announcing Actaeon's arrival, "horns and motors" now fill the Waste, further pushing the identification with the sounds of Western civilization, particularly modern automobiles. The ancient landscape has become a noisy modern city. Additionally, the implementation of "spring" parallels themes of rebirth and regeneration seen earlier in this poem. Spring traditionally symbolizes fertility and rebirth, but Eliot presents a dichotomy between the myth of Diana and Actaeon and the season in which it transpires. Why embed Actaeon's gruesome death amongst Spring's vivacity and liveliness? To me, this is the first time we see Eliot flip the switch between female fatal conclusions and male inevitable regeneration. Interesting, and I believe, intentional. Also, why modernize this myth? Does changing the protagonists' names make it more relatable, or more formidable, to modern society? Another example of how myths in the Wasteland evolve to perpetuate cyclical narratives. Also seeing some parallelism to the opening line of the poem...

Again, this is an allusion to Shakespeare's The Tempest. In Ariel's song, a drowned man's body undergoes a "sea-change", and his eyes supposedly become pearls. What's especially interesting is that the contents of what the narrator remembers- instead of remembering something personal or emotionally meaningful, the mind produces a fragment of Shakespeare. Thus connecting back to Eliot's larger techinque thorugh the Waste Land: the characters inhabit a world filled with fragments of the cultural past. Literature, myth, religion, and history survive, but often as disconnected peices that people repeat without being able to restore the coherent civilization they once represented. This line also introduces the possibility of transformation through death. Eyes becoming "pearls" turns something dead and decaying into something beautiful.

What I found most interesting about this line is how Eliot creates a paradox between Philomela's "invioable voice" and her actual story. Philomela, introduced in The Metamorphoses of Ovid, is the daughter of King Pandion and sister-in-law of Tereus (her sister's husband). Tereus, seeing Philomela, becomes deeply enamored with her and decides to confess his love in any way possible. One day, Philomela embarks on a journey to visit her sister, and Tereus accompanies her to her destination. However, Tereus takes advantage of their isolation and Philomela's defenselessness to capture her and take her to a secluded hut in the forest. There, he rapes her and proceeds to cut off her tongue after she expresses her discontent and anger. Immediately after, he continues to violate her, except this time she has no voice and cannot utter any complaints. But, what strikes me most about Eliot's reference to this myth is his intentional use of the word "invioable" to describe her voice. Invioable, by definition, means secure from violation or profanation -completely contradictory to the reality of Philomena's body. Physically, Philomena was incredibly violated and destroyed, but spiritually, her voice remains intact. Her tongue was cut off, but never her soul. It is the only thing that cannot be violated, because it is the only thing that no one can ever take from us or control. Furthermore, Eliot alludes to Philomela's experience of not speaking, or perhaps having no one to hear her speak, with his connection to the "desert". Philomela can only fill a desert with noise because no one is there to hear it. Ultimately, Eliot uses Philomela's tragic devastation to explore how one may be physically damaged or debilitated, yet their soul and spirit can never be harmed or changed.

In the archives, H.D. kept an extensive record of multiple literary figures' horoscopes, including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Sigmund Freud.

This image connects death with the possibility of rebirth (which we see as an extremely prevelant theme throughout the poem), but in a grotesque unnatural way. Eliot then suddenly addresses "you" through Baudelaire's words. The effect is to implicate the reader in the spirutall barreness of the Waste Land. They are not simply observing this dead, fragmented society from the outside; but belong to it. Eliot's image of the buried corpse potentially producing growth mirros Baudelaire's creation of "flowers" from corruption and evil. Thus prompting if something living can grow from death and decay in the same way. Both seem to ask if beauty and renewal will emerge- or attempts to emerge-from something corrupted. A third source that also explores corruption and rebirth is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Here, the moral corruption of the court denies Ophelia the platform to speak her truth because she is only a "pretty face", and consequently Ophelia takes her own life because she cannot stand the futile role to which she has been subjected amongst such moral decay and evil. In this source, life is not able to resurrect or withstand the corruption, symbolized by Ophelia's death, but in the Waste Land, the question is left more open-ended: can society be reborn after such destitution, or will corruption and death ultimately consume the remaining life, just like Ophelia.

Here we see a reference to a very important and specific tarot card: the Hanged Man. This tarot card traditionally signifies voluntary surrender, a necessary pause, and the possibility of gaining a new perspective by letting go of control. It is therefore significant that Madame Sosostris says, “I do not find / The Hanged Man.” Rather than presenting surrender itself, Eliot presents its absence. Perhaps the missing card symbolizes the speaker’s inability to surrender, pause, or relinquish control within a world consumed by despair and the aftermath of war. Yet it is also significant that the absence is explicitly acknowledged: the speaker recognizes what is missing. This recognition suggests an awareness that surrender or a new perspective may be necessary, even if it remains inaccessible. Sometimes we know, deep down, what must change, yet we wait for some catalytic symbol—like a tarot card or even a war—to force us to confront what we already know.

This line is, in itself, a variation, a contradiction perhaps, of verse 5 from Ecclesiastes 12. Ecclesiastes illustrates the inevitable coming of age and death and argues that we should embrace it rather than fear it. It not only mentions our mortality, but also echoes the ephemerality of every moment. The central message of this poem is to remember God and live meaningfully while you are young because youth, strength, pleasure, and eventually life itself are temporary. The verse, "almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden," is an indicator of how, with age, small things become harder. The flowering almond tree could be interepretaed as gaining grey hairs, and the grasshopper becoming a burden suggests that even small things become physically difficult with age. However, in The Wasteland, Eliot rewrites this verse with a different tone: despair. Motifs that once meant meaningful symbols of age have now lost their reassuring sentimental value and become echoes of anguish and inevitable doom. The almond tree and the grasshopper now symbolize the futility of age and the painful approach of death. Eliot thus trasnforms the meaning of the biblical verse to reflect a darker conception of mortality in the aftermath of world war 1.

After reading the original title, "He do the Police in Different Voices," and Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend," I was surprised to find vast similarities between the two, most notably the transactionalization of humanity. As in our class discussion, we see this same theme in the current title: land plots once shared by the general public are divided and sold as one-time statements. This demonstrates the loss of human connection and community, in favor of capitalism and selfish financial gain. Just like in the original title, Eliot makes this societal critique with a more specific and literal example in his original title: a man not only enters a house of prostitution, but is rejected from it for not looking acceptable. This encounter not only shows society's cruel, superficial priorities, but also reveals the moral corruption embedded in everyday life. "Our Mutual Friend" also opens with a very similar scene: a couple is "shopping" for a child. Dickens manipulates what would be a very intimate moment, adoption, into yet another transactional, superficial business deal. Dickens even refers to the event as a "stock market," with prices rising and falling for children based on demand. In all three examples, humanity has been stripped of its fundamental moral values to prioritize selfish financial endeavors that reflect society and the growing economy of the time. Each turns what would once be a moment of sincere social connection and community into a transactional experience designed solely to benefit the one who controls it.

After reading "The Golden Bough", the title now communicates the potential of rebirth and renewed fertility of a once arid and barren land. It therefore indicates the inevitable vegetational cycles embedded in the natural world. In the myth, "Osiris", Osiris himself is dismembered by his own brother Set, and pieces of his body are scattered. Osiris's death removes all life from the landscape of which he used to occupy, stripping it of any fertility and growth. Here you can see an obvious parallel to "The Waste Land" and its desolate, sterile quality. However, Isis, Osiris's wife, gathers the pieces and restores his body, after which Osiris becomes associated with the afterlife and regeneration. Because Osiris was also associated previously with the fertility of the land and the Nile, his death and restoration became symbolic of vegetation dying and returning to life. Eliot echoes this myth in his poem, immediately connecting it to the war-stricken era from which he was writing, with death all around, while also embedding messages of hope and the potential for societal rebirth. Therefore using this mythic pattern to represent a fragmented, spiritually barren modern world and the possibily of putting its fragments back together.