Here we see another example of Eliot playing with seemingly opposite things. As established in the Weston excerpt, fish, fishing, and fishers are all symbols associated with life and fertility. Throughout the poem, Eliot associates dry land with infertility. In this line, the narrator of the poem is fishing, an act associated with life and fertility, among an arid landscape, an image associated with death and infertility. Eliot's decision to put these two images together continues his commentary on the nature of opposites, or, more specifically, his seeming belief that things that are typically positioned in direct opposition to each other are not actually opposite. He seems to be pointing out that everything exists in a circle: life and death happen simultaneously, so are not truly opposites.

The reference here to "maternal lamentation" seems to be connected to Hesse's analysis that Europe's "Downfall" is "a return home to the mother, a turning back to Asia, to the source....and will necessarily lead, like every death on earth, to a new birth." This section is quite clearly connected to the reappearing theme of birth, death, rebirth in TWL, with the addition of an explicit reference to the role of women in the human life cycle. To this point in the poem, women have been represented as manipulative and cunning, or as victims of violence perpetrated by me; there is a stark shift here to a representation of a Mother figure, watching over, and mourning for, humanity.

This section of references to dry, waterless rock is repetition from line 4.

As I offered in a previous annotation, I think this repetition is connected to the (potentially) circular shape of the poem; Eliot deals extensively with the cycle of birth death rebirth, which has a circular nature, throughout the poem. The form seems to reflect the content in the sense that it is also has a circularity to it and seems to be taking the reader through the life cycle, though it starts with death rather than birth.

Eliot uses the recurring water imagery to bring back the concept of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, emphasizing its circular nature. Previously in the poem, Eliot subverts traditional imagery by connecting water and death, a subversion which is repeated here. He adds a further element to the correlation of water and death by representing water as a sort of television screen through which Phlebas watches his life as he drowns.

As the poem continues, Eliot's references to water and boats become more frequent; I have a very tentative idea of why these images reappear. Eliot is somewhat obsessed with the birth death rebirth cycle, so perhaps he draws on the imagery of a boat and river to guide the readers through a life cycle which he writes in the poem. To use the boat imagery, readers get into the boat at the beginning of the poem, which starts with death, then (maybe?) we sail towards a section of rebirth, then earthly torment, then death, then whatever happens after death? This is a very new, very rough version of this idea, but it popped into my head as a potential answer for why Eliot comes back to the boat and river/water imagery.

This song is borrowed from Wagner's opera. Throughout the poem, we find many reference to rivers and other bodies of water; alongside the river references, Eliot often introduces women, establishing a connection between women and rivers. This connection is backed up in some of the reference sources, where we see nymphs and Rhinemaidens appearing as characters, whether central to the story or not.

Eliot's specification that the river is sweating "oil and tar" is perhaps a reference to industrialization.

Tiresias, similar to the other prophets Eliot makes reference to in the poem, seemed to be cursed by the blessing of prophecy. In the Ovid excerpt, the loss of Tiresias' physical sight combined with the "gift" of prophetic sight is described as a "pairing [of] pain with prophecy."

I don't have an answer for this at the moment, but I think it is important to explore further Eliot's near obsession with prophecy, paired with his (to this point) inclusion of prophets who are otherwise miserable.

Another description of sex as violent, without clear consent from the woman.

A reference to Tiresias' experience living as a woman for 7 years. Eliot's somewhat abrupt introduction of an (extreme) example of gender subversion is interesting, especially considering that, in earlier points of the poem, he relies oncommon tropes to describe women.

This refers back to the story of Philomena which Eliot address in A Game of Chess.

The reference sources for this section are full of references to sexual assault and the agency of women, with a greater connection to sex as sin and women's culpability in violence perpetuated against them. The excerpt from One of Us is essentially an encouragement for the young man featured in the novel to coerce Eve into having sex.

The choice of the name Eve is fascinating, and likely quite meaningful. In the Bible, Eve sins, then deceives Adam into sinning, resulting in their banishment from the Garden of Eden. This is connected to the idea of women holding all of the blame for their own assault; women are so tempting for men (read: evil and manipulative) that they "force" men to commit the sin of rape.

Eliot returns more explicitly to the images of water, specifically rivers, that appeared in The Burial of the Dead. In most of the reference sources for this section, a focus is not only given to the rivers of England, but also to the general geography and physical features of the land, with the country portrayed in a loving way.

In the A Martyred Woman section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, he describes the lavish room in which an anonymous prostitute has died, presumably as a victim of sexual violence. Eliot borrows Baudelaire's style of description of the scene of a woman's death, yet the woman characters Eliot uses are queens, or have some level of social status. How does Eliot equate a queen with an anonymous prostitute?

In both descriptions, most of the focus is given to the material objects that often represent woman's vanity: jewels, perfumes, satin. The only connection between the queen and the prostitute is death and vanity. There are very few, if any, representations of a vain woman who is not also cunning and, frankly, evil.

Eliot's decision to place a queen and prostitute on the same social level, as well as Eliot's decision to describe the dead woman by the material objects of her vanity may reveal Eliot's negative feelings about women.

As Stephanie pointed out, Eliot introduces conflict into typical imagery of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth by repositioning water, usually portrayed as a "giver of life", as a giver of death. The connection between water and death is also present in Inferno, as a river is the connection to Hell.

A reference to a war between the Roman Republic and Carthage. It was a naval battle, which connects to Eliot's repeated water imagery, as well as his occasional association between water and death or violence.

Eliot's description of a tarot reading mimics the reading depicted in At The Door Of The House in that both texts portray a one sided listing of the cards, with little explanation given for their meaning, aside from vague, foreboding divininations.

Eliot's inclusion of tarot moves back to the concept of prophecy, which has appeared again and again in the references sources, specifically the Ovid and Ezekiel sections.

Quoted from Tristan and Iseult. Interestingly, the question is said by a young sailor who, according to the text, the audience never sees, only hears. Eliot also uses a somewhat elusive, omniscient voice throughout the poem.

In the excerpt from Ezekiel, God tells Ezekiel that that "the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate" because the people have sinned against Him. There were some people at the time of WW1 who attributed its atrocity to God's revenge against a sinful humanity, so perhaps Eliot is referencing this.

Interestingly, Eliot writes very pleasant summertime memories that take place in Germany. In An Unusual Young Man, Brooke describes the urge to change one's positive memories of Germany to negative ones, as they are perceived as the enemy to the English. Eliot's portrayal of a pleasant Germany is at odds with his deep relationship with England, especially at the time in which TWL was published.

In The Canterbury Tales, April is characterized by its "sweet smelling showers" that "pierce the drought of March" and create the flower. This imagery is in line with the typical representations of April and springtime as joyful times of fertility and rebirth. Though Eliot keeps the concept of rebirth present, he portrays it as cruel, which is unusual.

Similarly to The Canterbury Tales, Eliot marks the passage of time and the corresponding actions of human life with the seasons. In Chaucer's poem, springtime brings life and religious pilgrimages, while Eliot portrays the life of spring as cruel, and the death during winter as comforting.

The original epigraph is quoted from Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and is Marlow's description of Kurtz's final moments. Kurtz's time in the gray area between life and death is described as "that supreme moment of complete knowledge." In Petronicus, the Sybil is portrayed as desiring death as a release from her earthly pain. Line 23 in the published version includes a reference to Ecclesiastes, a book of the Christian and Hebrew Bibles; one of the core messages of the book is that all humans die, but death is better than life.

These references all frame death as something positive, as a moment of sublime understanding or a release from earthly torment. Eliot's use of desolate, violent, barren imagery to describe earthly life in the poem serves to support the idea that death is better than life, or, possibly, to illuminate Eliot's personal belief in this concept.

Although the messaging is quite similar between all three sources, Eliot never explicitly credits Heart of Darkness as an influence on the published version of the poem; did he discard the novella as a source, or did he simply decline to credit it? Why did he make the decision to change the epigraph to a quotation from the Sibyl story, rather than use the Conrad quotation?

In From Ritual to Romance, Weston explains that in most cases, the destruction of the land was caused by drought, while in three cases, the destruction was caused by war. Both of these causes are addressed by Eliot in the poem. In Part V especially, he frequently makes references to a land of rocks without water, creating an image of barrenness, or infertility, that readers can infer has been caused by drought. Eliot wrote the poem as a response to the destruction caused by WW1, the aftermath of which rendered the land "waste."

To me, Eliot's references to infertility caused by drought are the clearest, but I'm sure his commentary on the effects of WW1 will become clearer as we continue exploring the poem.

"The Golden Bough" received a huge amount of criticism from other anthropologists and scholars of religion, and was quite quickly pushed aside within academia. However, the text was hugely important in the creative sphere, with many of the most influential writers of the time citing Frazer's work.

Why the divide in the reception of Frazer's scholarship between the academic and creative spheres? Why was Frazer's work so influential to so many creative writers of the time?

Draws on scholarship of the Grail legend, as well as "The Golden Bough," which was written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer and was a wide ranging comparative study of religion and mythology.