The use of the nursery rhyme is an obvious callback to the passage, "A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many / I had not thought death had undone so many." London Bridge presents an interesting symbol, the bridge between the financial hub of the City of London and the primarily residential/market district of Southwark. This bridge is the symbol of the decay of society in "The Burial of the Dead,' and its destruction at the end of the poem is, in some respects, a resolution of this conflict.

We already know that, in The Waste Land, perception, sensation, is "burning" with human emotion, making it imperfect (as introduced by the "Fire Sermon Discourse") in the eponymous third section of the poem; FH Bradley's Appearance and Reality, despite being written centuries in a different continent, reflects much of the same metaphysical ideas of tainted perception. later. The ideas of Here, the story of Ugolino's downfall from Inferno is recounted, as per the footnote to this line. The perversion of the original story comes with the combination of the Hindu teachings:

"The eye is truth... So if now two people were to come arguing, one saying 'I have seen,' the other saying 'I have heard,we would believe the one saying I have seen" (Brihadaranyaka, ch. 14)

The implication here becomes that not only is Ugolino a cannibal and traitor damned to Hell, but that he may have been mistaken that he was 'in a prison.' The prison is confirmed not by an observation, but by a thought, based on a sensory observation — hearing the door lock. In this synthesis of Indic and Christian religions, hearing is now inaccurate, 'burning' more than even sight does.

The conclusion of this sad scene is not to despair or to condemn but to "Dayadhvam" — be passionate. In fact, "Dayadhvam" has been intentionally placed out of order, as it appears third in the original dialogue, but has been moved to the middle of the three commands of the Thunder in The Waste Land. The special attention paid to compassion in the face of this almost absurd scene of sin, despair, and mistakes, highlights the flawed nature of perception in The Waste Land.

The description of the 'Third' as neither male or female is important to the understanding of this passage. The only other character in The Waste Land of ambiguous gender is Tiresias, but Tiresias is described as having both male and female features. Here, the 'Third' has neither, and is just a figure in a hood. In the Visuddhimagga, this motif finds its origin in the dialogue:

"Was it a woman, or a man, / That passed this way? I cannot tell / But this I know, a set of bones, / Is travelling on this road." (298)

The reduction of the personage of the 'Third' to just a "set of bones" forms the important part of this reference. It also brings the 'Third' into direct conflict with its failure to be identified along with the "you and I" earlier in the stanza. Eliot describes the 'Third' as impersonable, unable to be directly observed, but a definite spiritual sensation. The "set of bones" description is the opposite, observable, but without defining characteristics. The nature of the 'Third' thus is inherently paradoxical, a "set of bones" but "neither a man or a woman." Eliot even describes the 'Third' as both "walking" and "gliding," emphasizing the contradictions inherent in the extra companion.

Last year, Lauren made an interesting point that "Death by Water" is a section of binary opposites, but that these opposites are negated by the death of Phlebas. In fact, of the four binaries in this section, two are invented, as opposed to descriptions of natural behavior ('profit/loss' and 'gentile/Jew'). Phlebas specifically "forgot... the profit and loss" and the command of the third stanza is expressly applied to both the gentiles and the Jews. The matter of religion, of the afterlife, whether it be in the Inferno, a Hellenic Hades, or some other domain, is not relevant to Phlebas, who at this point is just a corpse. The bones do not believe anything, that is a matter of the soul/mind. I've noticed themes of deconstruction, preceding the work of the poststructuralists by quite a few decades, in other parts of the poem, but here the distinction is made quite clear. The 'constructed' binaries are destroyed by the "drowned Phoenician sailor," who does not participate in society, but just rises and falls with the waves.

Eliot's original draft for "Death by Water" includes a couplet that works to this effect. Immediately before the published section appears in the typescript, the poem reads, "And if Another knows, I know I know not, / Who only know there is no more noise now." These two lines are one of the only parts of the typescript not to be crossed out during Ezra Pound's revisions, indicating their importance to the central theme of the section. Before deconstruction was anywhere close to a formal statement, Eliot had taken on ideas of societally-created binaries, and questioned them. The 'noise' in this context could refer to the obfustication of the true forms of things by the binaries, which irreversibly alter their perception; as Phlebas, the observer, is dead, so dies the binary and its noise. The contradictions of knowledge here ("I know I know not) are important too, and form their own binary. In the deconstructionist view, knowledge cannot be taken as absolute because it is "burning" to use the words of the Fire Sermon Discourse, tainted by the initial perceptions of any observer.

While Eliot refers directly in the footnote for "What the Thunder Said" to the New Testament journey to Emmaus, another Biblical source provides much of the background of the desert where the final section of The Waste Land begins. In the Exodus narrative (though the specific events are further detailed in Numbers), as the Israelites wander the desert for forty years, they confront Moses for water and God intercedes, telling Moses to strike a rock, which will produce water. In this way, any religious allusion to water and rock are inexorably linked to the Exodus narrative. In the Numbers version of the episode, Moses is told "speak ye unto the rock... and it shall give forth its water (emphasis added);" however, he disobeyed, "[striking] the rock twice," so God punishes him by barring him from entering the Promised Land (Numbers 20 KJV).

In the apocalyptic desert of "What the Thunder Said," the aftershocks of Moses deprives the travelers of their water. They are parched and stranded on "the sandy road" with "rock and no water" (332). In fact, Eliot may be intentionally misleading with the footnote, as the journey to Emmaus is not really referenced here, but is a description of Jesus's appearance post-resurrection in the Gospel of Luke (Wikipedia). The 'journey,' whether it be the two disciples on the way to Emmaus or the Israelites working their way towards the Promised Land (through a 'Waste Land'), makes up a central part of the fifth part of the poem.

Last year, Lauren made an interesting point that "Death by Water" is a section of binary opposites, but that these opposites are negated by the death of Phlebas. In fact, of the four binaries in this section, two are invented, as opposed to descriptions of natural behavior ('profit/loss' and 'gentile/Jew'). Phlebas specifically "forgot... the profit and loss" and the command of the third stanza is expressly applied to both the gentiles and the Jews. The matter of religion, of the afterlife, whether it be in the Inferno, a Hellenic Hades, or some other domain, is not relevant to Phlebas, who at this point is just a corpse. The bones do not believe anything, that is a matter of the soul/mind. I've noticed themes of deconstruction, preceding the work of the poststructuralists by quite a few decades, in other parts of the poem, but here the distinction is made quite clear. The 'constructed' binaries are destroyed by the "drowned Phoenician sailor," who does not participate in society, but just rises and falls with the waves.

Eliot's original draft for "Death by Water" includes a couplet that works to this effect. Immediately before the published section appears in the typescript, the poem reads, "And if Another knows, I know I know not, / Who only know there is no more noise now." These two lines are one of the only parts of the typescript not to be crossed out during Ezra Pound's revisions, indicating their importance to the central theme of the section. Before deconstruction was anywhere close to a formal statement, Eliot had taken on ideas of societally-created binaries, and questioned them. The 'noise' in this context could refer to the obfustication of the true forms of things by the binaries, which irreversibly alter their perception; as Phlebas, the observer, is dead, so dies the binary and its noise. The contradictions of knowledge here ("I know I know not) are important too, and form their own binary. In the deconstructionist view, knowledge cannot be taken as absolute because it is "burning" to use the words of the Fire Sermon Discourse, tainted by the initial perceptions of any observer.

The language of the "Fire Sermon Discourse" and Augustine's Confessions reminded me of the ideas of the poststructuralists and existentalists, which made up my summer reading assignment. While Eliot preceded poststructuralism and deconstruction by a few decades the same ideas start to work their way into The Waste Land during "The Fire Sermon." Richie points out how the Buddhist teachings specifically represent this idea that "things are tainted by the [act of being perceived]." The fire, the "burning," represents the necessary condition that every object is defined by the observer (the 'Look'/'Gaze').

Deconstruction is the process of analyzing and destroying structural binaries that link concepts in the mind, especially at the collective and societal levels. The fact that these ideas find a forerunner in this section of The Waste Land is incredibly interesting, especially as to Eliot's satire of modern British life and its excesses. This couplet, "I can connect / Nothing with nothing," is then an expression of deconstructionist and poststructuralist ideas, moving beyond the Platonic theory of forms. The "nothing with nothing" line is an extreme version of the Buddha's teachings, that there is no object without perception, and that all of that perception is flawed. I'm not sure exactly how/what ideas Eliot's New Criticism shares with its contemporary of structuralism, and later poststructuralism, so I would want to look into that line further.

"A Game of Chess" refuses to discuss its subject matter — namely coercion and rape — in outright terms, resorting to euphemisms, namely the phrase "Jug Jug" (which finds a recurrence in "The Fire Sermon") and the titular game of 'chess.' The third part of The Waste Land eschews this for a much more explicit depiction of this subject matter. The perspective of "I Tiresias" provides the key into this shift, as Eliot's footnote to the line reveals. Eliot comments that Tiresias is "a mere spectator" but one who is "the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest." Tiresias's status as having embodied both a man and a woman provides enormous significance to his presence, as Eliot adds, "So all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias." This creates a 'wasteland' of gender without any specific allegiance, a commonality that allows Tiresias to be a neutral observer — an infinitely wise, but blind prophet, flawed just as the Cumean Sybil was. His report can be taken as true, and is incredibly disturbing, especially as the footnote concludes with, "What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem." This vingette — the longest and most singular up to this point — quite simply describes the rape of the typist at the hands of the small house agent's clerk.

Eliot also continues his criticism/study of prophets and their prophecies. The latter part, where the actual violence occurs, is not perceived, but "foretold" by Tiresias. As we know by this point, prophets are not the most reliable source of knowledge in The Waste Land, even when the ancient perception of Tiresias's wisdom was immaculate — he was "honoured as a god" after his death (Lempriere 2). There is definitely a reason that it is explicitly stated that the acts of violence depicted in the latter half of this vignette are not explicitly said to have occured, and this must form a larger part of what marks The Waste Land's symbolism, as Eliot's footnote tells us.

This passage provides an inversion of Edward Carpenter's advanced society in Towards Democracy. Carpenter travels along the rivers of the United Kingdom (especially the River Thames), describing the sublime experience of the development along their banks — this theme of democracy as sublime has become especially prescient in modern times (as in Bob Dylan's Chimes of Freedom). One particularly interesting passage in the Carpenter poem marks the transition from the large-scale developments, to specific economic activities, "I see the huge warehouses of Manchester... I walk through the Liverpool Exchange; the brokers stand in knots; the greetings, the frockcoats, the rosebuds; the handling and comparing of cotton samples" (62). While the business has changed by the time of The Waste Land — moving from textiles to banking, the same motif presents itself, this time inverted, "And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors; / Departed, have left no addresses" (180-1). As opposed to the actual act of commerce that forms the classical liberal paradise in Towards Democracy, Eliot writes of an oligarchy, the 'heirs' who do not conduct business but instead 'loiter.' This perversion of Carpenter's utopian vision falls in line with the inversion of Prothalamion that begins this section of The Waste Land.

"A Game of Chess" details, through various vignettes, the conflict between expectations of fertility and chastity (the Madonna/whore complex), which also forms a central part of Ophelia's character arc in Hamlet. These closing words also mark, as Amelia noted, Ophelia's closing words — her "suicide note." As Ophelia descends into insanity, she begins to sing, and one verse of note reveals an important off-stage development, "Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes / And dupp'd the chamber-door / Let in the maid, that out a maid / Never departed more." The implication of these lines is clear, Hamlet engaged in an illegal premarital relationship with Ophelia, leading to his rejection of her as his wife later on. The shock of this rejection, along with learning that Hamlet murdered her father, led her to commit suicide by drowning herself in the river ("Death by Water"). These events are never explicitly stated in Hamlet, perhaps because such themes stated explicitly would be unacceptable during the Elizabethan era. In The Waste Land, "chess" becomes one of many euphemisms for sexual activity, as Eliot writes, "And we shall play a game of chess, / Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door" (137-8). It doesn't take a grandmaster to realize that it is not chess that involves "waiting for a knock upon the door." The choice of chess presents an incredibly rich interpretation, compared to many more common euphemisms (i.e. flowers in Hamlet). Chess is an adversarial game (Black vs white, man vs woman) which follows with many of the themes of violence that derive from the Middleton play of the same name.. The scene of Albert and Lil also acts as a negotiation, adversarial in nature (another game of chess). These themes constitute the dysfunction that gives the latter half of "A Game of Chess" its disorganized form.

I thought Amelie's ideas on how perfume/scent is used to characterize and feminize women in this passage and in the ones that inspired it, especially "The Martyred Woman," and Antony and Cleopatra. Further, the idea of exoticism, exemplified by these "strange synthetic perfumes," becomes a motivator and driver of violence. Baudelaire writes, "The bizarre aspect of that solitude... reveals an unwholesome love / Guilty joys and exotic revelries / With infernal kisses" (Baudelaire 2). Throughout this verse, the large emphasis is on every single off-putting aspect of the scene, which is not surprising giving its graphic nature. This same notion can be found in Antony and Cleopatra too, as Enobarus says:

"From the barge a strange invisible perfume hits the sense of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast her people out upon her; and Antony, enthroned i' the marketplace did sit alone, whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too. And made a gap in nature (3).

The peculiar nature of the perfume is emphasized here again too. The perfume, which is described very similarly to The Waste Land, is incredibly disruptive too, creating a "gap in nature." While not quite as immediately violent as the Baudelaire poem, all three of these works use perfume to the same effect, a source disruption and conflict.

Language of water has played an important part in the symbolism and imagery of "The Burial of the Dead." Here, the workers entering the City of London from Southwark in the morning are directly described as "flowing" twice (lines 62 and 66). This does not come from Inferno, where Charon takes the sinners across the river in a boat, as opposed to the sinners forming the 'river' themselves. Dante, in the third canto explicitly mentioned by Eliot in his footnotes, instead writes, "All these made a tumult, always whirling/In that black and timeless air/As sand swirled in a whirlwind (emphasis added)" (III, 28-30). The web of symbolism has been flipped from air/wind imagery to water/river imagery. The reader has already been told, by Madame Sosostris in the previous stanza, to "fear death by water." Instead of the violent winds that characterize 'Hell' in Inferno, Eliot uses flowing water to make his London an "Unreal City." The deindividualizing nature of this flow is also made clear, the line continues. "Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled/And each man fixed his eyes before his feet" (63-4). This first part is oddly written in passive voice, which we've already pointed out as a difference from the original Dante. We, the readers, have no idea who "exhaled" these "sighs," and a single distinct person — "Stetson!" — is not even identified until ten lines into this stanza. The river sweeps everyone away.

Madame Sosostris — who deals the narrator his Tarot — comes from Seostoris in Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow, but is depicted quite differently here than in her original appearance. As part of Huxley's satire, he critiques the idea of claiming to portend the future:

"Is it really true?" asked white muslin.

The witch gave a shrug of the shoulders. "I merely tell you what I read in your hand. Good afternoon. That will be sixpence. Yes, I have change. Thank you. Good afternoon." (Huxley 2)

The witch deflects from the question, on the veracity of her predictions, and makes the interaction a commercial one — 'truth' for change. Eliot continues this criticism in his own work, introducing her as "famous clairvoyante / Had a bad cold, nevertheless / Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe" (43-5). The ironic aspect of these lines is immediately obvious, that anyone as 'wise' as Sosostris would be able to avoid coming down with a 'bad cold.' Not once does Eliot actually ascribe to her the values that she "is known" to have, making clear that Madame Sosostris should not be taken as a legitimate source of prophecy. In fact, by changing the character's name ever so slightly, we are reminded that she is "So-so" in her divination abilities. Reinforcing this interpretation is the repetition of the "thank you" line which the original character uses at the end of her session in Crome Yellow.

Of particular interest in this stanza is the line, the clairvoyant's command to "Fear death by water," which later appears as the the fourth section of the poem, "Death by Water." If she is indeed unable to tell the future, this would make her warning moot, and the water that drowns Phlebas in Part IV not worthy of being feared.

The most interesting aspect of line 21 is that it is written in the second person, where the 'you,' is the 'Son of man' first addressed in the preceding line. The footnotes ascribe this passage as a reference to the Hebrew Bible, the Books of Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes. The 'son of man' refrain makes its first appearance in Ezekiel 2:1, as God commands Ezekiel to return to Israel and make them more holy — at this time the Babylonian Exile has occurred, supposedly as punishment for polytheism in Israel. This whole stanza, as it continues until, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust," at line 30, works as an extension/modernization of the Ezekiel story.

The idea of knowledge, or the lack of it, has been present since our initial discussions of The Waste Land, and was an important factor in the initial Heart of Darkness epigraph as well. This scene almost is an inversion of that Conrad scene, where there is no knowledge at all of the world outside of the 'waste land' motif. The Ezekiel reference adds to this understanding, in Ch. 3, God commands Ezekiel:

1. ... Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll; and go speak unto the house of Israel.

... 4. And He said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them."

This act of delivering knowledge works its way into The Waste Land with this command, and forms the backbone of the second-person aspect of this passage.

'Different voices' form the backbone both of The Waste Land's symbolism and structure, from the poem's original title, He Do the Police in Different Voices (from Dickens), to the epigraph, with Latin narration and Greek dialogue (from Satyricon). Eliot, in the vein of "Gerontion" — which would have served as this poem's introduction — uses a wide variety of different narrative voices, the confluence of which creates The Waste Land. The idea of 'waste land' as common space, unclaimed by nobility and left for public exploitation becomes apparent as an intrinsic part of Eliot's poem itself. In the context of the feudal understanding of 'waste land,' the title does not refer to just a desolate, post-apocalyptic barren, but more specifically an area not reserved to any one person. While not farmland, poetry can also have a 'waste land,' where there is no single or unitary narrative voice, but rather oscillations between numerous separate, but intertwined perspectives. This literary 'waste land' comes to fruition in the unique structure and style of Eliot's epic poem.

Further, both epigraphs — original and published — represent the overwhelming, almost terrifying power of knowledge. While the most memorable part of the original quote, from Conrad's Heart of Darkness may be Kurtz's dying exclamation, "The horror! The horror!" the most valuable part to understanding the 'waste land' motif is the opening sentence, "Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?" (Conrad 4). The stark similarity between this moment and the declaration of the sibyl (oracle) that, when asked of her wish, replies, "I want to die" (Petronius 4). This confluence of voices can also be seen as a 'supreme moment of complete knowledge,' when the only thing left to do is despair and the only thing left behind is The Waste Land.

The idea of the "Waste Land" as a temporary status, a metaphorical winter, casts Eliot's poem in a new light. The Waste Land becomes a performance, a magical act just like the vegetation ceremonies, "in substance a dramatic representation of the act they wished to facilitate." (Frazer 4). While the religious imagery of the poem is not bound to one single faith or tradition, neither is the idea of a fertility/nature god who is resurrected, bringing back what we now know as Spring. In fact, the wide variety of traditions that fit this description lend credence to some of the more collectivizing aspects of Eliot's work, as shown in "Gerontion," the original introduction to the epic. The obvious "winter" that has caused The Waste Land is World War I and the resulting destruction of Europe; however, the cyclical nature of 'Waste' and 'Rebirth' do not make this ascription clear cut. The Golden Bough demonstrates this phenomenon with the myth of Tammuz/Adonis:

"Every year [Tammuz's] divine mistress journeyed in quest of him 'to the land from which there is no returning'... During her absence the passion of love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their kind. All life was threatened with extinction" (Frazer 9).

This description matches with the representations of a "Waste Land" throughout the poem; with the key difference being the emphasis of the annual (cyclical) nature of the processes involved. Eliot uses the ideas of The Golden Bough to build a cycle of death/rebirth, making The Waste Land a magical performance in and of itself.