"Who is the third who walks always beside you?" correlates with Ernest Shackleton's account during his last expedition. After his trek across South Georgia, he wrote, "it seemed to me often that we were four, not three" (pg. 211). His companions confirmed this eeriness of some type of mysterious presence. Eliot uses Shackleton's testimony to inject a brief moment of the uncanny and the potentially divine into the poem's landscape. The setting described by Eliot in this scene is more vague and ambiguous than Shackleton's certainty. The poem counts only two figures, yet, sees a "gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded" (line 364). This figure is unrecognisable, evident from line 365: "I do not know whether a man or a woman." It could be: Christ, appearing to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24), where they do not recognize him; a hallucination born of exhaustion and spiritual despair; or the holy spirit, present but unrecognized. Later, Eliot reiterates the question, this time in a more intensified manner. He writes, "But who is that on the other side of you?" (line 366). Eliot is suggesting not one, but multiple mysterious presences. This resonates with the Indian legend from Marudanayagam, where three seers become aware of a fourth, the Lord Vishnu himself. The passage enacts a similar spiritual arithmetic: the human count is wrong; the divine is present but unseen, or unacknowledged, in the waste land. It is a moment where the material world seems to be haunted by a spiritual reality that the inhabitants can sense but not comprehend.

Eliot constantly mentions tarot cards and myths with themes of fertility and sterility. There is also a big contrast between water and fire. In a poem filled with so many symbols and elements indicating destruction and//or a form of darkness, water has served as a palette cleanser and a symbol of life, spirit, and purification. And so, it is interesting how here, there is "no water but only rock." Eliot later writes on lines 338-339, "If there were only water amongst the rock / Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit." This image perfectly encapsulates the sterility in this section and the true "waste land." It's also interesting how the title of this section is literally "What the Thunder Said," and yet, there is only "dry sterile thunder without rain" (line 342). In Themis, Harrison explains that thunder was not just a sound, but a manifestation of divine power, or mana, a force that brought a life-giving rain. In contrast, the thunder in this section is empty and a form of revelation without its substance. It promises meaning but delivers none. In this way, it mirrors a modern world where ancient symbols have lost their power. Finally, from Hermit Thrush, Eliot states that the hermit thrush was "the sweetest singer of all American birds." Its song is not one of mere prettiness, but of "tranquil clearness of tone and exalted serenity." By introducing it here, Eliot holds up an ideal of pure, natural, spiritual music, a stark contrast to the "dry grass singing" and the "cicada." The thrush's song is inseparable from the "sound of water over a rock." The "Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop" is both the sound of water and the rhythm of the bird's song. This fusion creates a single, transcendent symbol for grace, creativity, and spiritual renewal.

In the "Death by Water" section, the power comes from what it turned out not to be as much as what it became. The ten lines were carved out of a much longer, more narrative draft about a grim fishing voyage. By cutting all the backstory and noise, Eliot and Pound basically transformed a tedious story into a haunting epitaph, almost as if they realized the idea of death was more powerful than the messy process of dying. What's really interesting is how this condensed version seems to be in conversation with other, grander stories of death at sea. There's Dante's Ulysses, who's damned for his ambitious, endless quest for knowledge. And then there's the myth of Hylas, who's almost magically absorbed into the water by lovesick nymphs. But Phlebas isn't a hero or a lover; he's a Phoenician merchant. His world was "profit and loss." His death isn't a tragic punishment or a mythical transformation. it just happens. The water here isn't really saving or damning him; it's just this neutral, indifferent force that processes his body, erasing his identity. The ending suddenly shifts and speaks directly to "you who turn the wheel." It feels like a warning, but I'm not entirely sure what it's warning against. Maybe it's that in our own focus on modern, practical concerns, like turning the wheel of our own lives, looking for the next opportunity, we're all just as vulnerable to being completely undone as Phlebas was. It's not about a grand failure, but a quiet, universal one. The poem seems to be suggesting that this kind of anonymous, materialistic death is the modern condition, and we're all sort of drifting toward it.

Line 266 says, "The river sweats / Oil and tar." This line is contradictory in obvious ways; for one, a healthy river should not contain industrial waste like "oil and tar." The polluted river is another example of how nature is disrupted by modern life and industrialization. Also, a river shouldn't "sweat;" it's supposed to flow. The following line, as well as line 273, describes how "the barges drift" and "wash" rather than sail with purpose. There are hints of rhythm in this section, but they are inconsistent and sluggish, mimicking "the turning tide." Further down, lines 277-78 state "Weialala leia / Wallala leialala," which, in the context of Wagner, refers to the Rhinemaidens' song, a sorrowful song of lost gold and a pure, natural world despoiled by greed. By placing it here, Eliot transplants this lament to the polluted Thames. The modern world has its own stolen gold (industrial wealth), which has similarly cursed it, leading to spiritual decay. The song becomes a ghostly echo of a lost purity, now meaningless in its new context, just a sound the river makes. The scene of the poem then shifts to a ghostly memory: "Elizabeth and Leicester / Beating oars / The stern was formed / A gilded shell / Red and gold." This seems like a moment of romance and pageantry. However, Froude reveals the reality beneath the "gilded shell." Froude's history details the political intrigue, the suspected murder of Leicester's wife, and Elizabeth's calculated use of marriage as a political tool. Their relationship was not pure passion but a "fatal affection" entangled with power, suspicion, and death. The "brisk swell" in line 284 that they create is not just water, but the ripple of historical consequence and personal sin. The same Rhinemaidens' lament follows them, subtly linking their political greed to Alberich's curse on the ring.

I find it interesting how Tiresias is between man and woman. According to Ovid and Lempriere, Tiresias lived for seven years as a woman after striking two mating snakes. This unique experience, which allowed him to settle the dispute between Jove and Juno about sexual pleasure, makes him the ultimate witness. His "wrinkled female breasts" and status as an "old man with wrinkled dugs" later in line 228 signify his union of male and female, allowing him to embody both the male "clerk" and the female "typist." We've seen Eliot experiment with characters who shift from man to woman, but never embody both. By embodying both, Tiresias unites the two genders. I'm even more intrigued by the fact that Tiresias is blind ("condemned to never-ending night," as stated by Ovis) and a prophet. Tiresias is not only between man and woman ("throbbing between two lives," line 218), but moving between the past and the present. His loss of sight almost strengthens the truth he sees by enabling him to witness the flaws of either man or woman, or the modern day. Is Eliot suggesting that these two aspects can only unite successfully when being blinded by worldly concerns?

It's interesting to me how Eliot ends this section of The Waste Land with Ophelia's last words before she commits suicide. Lines before, we get references to "Bill," "Lou," and "May," indicating that the speaker is bidding farewell from the pub setting. Ophelia's line, on the other hand, bids farewell on behalf of not just Lil and the woman in the pub, but all the "sweet ladies" of the waste land. This idea of death as a fate is super interesting. The women have their emotional and spiritual deaths connected to Ophelia's physical death. This is yet another instance where we see suicide in a female in The Waste Land. If I think about what Eliot is trying to get at with women x waste land, especially with this Ophelia connection, I'd say the waste land is a world where the modes of expressing experiences like song, symbol, and even madness have been stripped of their meaning and beauty, leaving only bad nerves, dirty gossip, and the last call of the pub. This is obviously not the ideal place for women; hence, modern society is not fit for women to flourish.

The "antique mantel" is described as a "window" into the "sylvan scene," which refers to the wooded area where King Teresus rapes his sister-in-law, Philomela. A "window," though a physical barrier separating the inside from the outside, still connects the two spaces through sight and time (as in, the spaces exist simultaneously). By calling the "mantel" a "window," Eliot implies that this violent and ancient tale is not confined to the past, but rather exists beneath the foundations of the modern world. Time and the development of civilization merely glaze over the same, sick instincts of King Teresus from plain sight.<br /> The mantel itself communicates the moment Philomela transforms into a nightingale, which ties in with how Philomela used tapestry to convey to Procne the crime Teresus had committed. Art is being used as a source of language. Philomela's "voice" (which is really the tapestry, since she lost her ability to speak from getting her tongue cut off) is described as "inviolable." Eliot contradicts this immediately, however, by stating that despite her cries, "the world pursues," and her words are reduced to "'Jug Jug'" into "dirty" ears. "Jug Jug" refers to a Shakespearean shorthand representing a nightingale's song. Philomela attempts to convey her eternal song and voice, but to no avail. It is degraded and misunderstood by modern society as a result of its "dirty" mindset and perspective on abuse, sex, and love.

This part of The Waste Land contrasts with the previous sections with its modern London setting shrouded in a "brown fog." The crowd “flowing” over London Bridge is not described with vitality or excitement, but rather, with a ghostly, uniform motion. Line 63 in particular, "I had not thought death had undone so many," indicates that the workers have become a crowd of the damned. The Londoners’ sighs are "short and infrequent” (line 64), and they stare blankly at their feet, devoid of connection or hope. In Canto III, Dante and Virgil witness the souls of the Neutrals, those who in life lived without blame or praise. Dante observes, "I saw a whirling banner that ran so fast / it seemed as though it never could find rest. / Behind it came so long a file of people / that I could not believe death had undone so many" (5). Eliot lifts Dante's line almost verbatim. The Londoners are the modern equivalent of Dante's Neutrals-- spiritually empty, directionless, and condemned to a meaningless, purgatorial existence. They are not in Hell proper but in a chamber of a state of non-being, which perfectly captures the spiritual alienation of the modern urban person.

“Fresh blows the wind / To the homeland / My Irish child, / Where do you linger?" Wagner presents a feeling of longing, a sailor calling for his distant love. This myth segues perfectly into the distant memory of the "hyacinth girl” mentioned in the following lines. The memory itself is one of intense, overwhelming experience, an encounter so powerful with beauty and love that it paralyzes the speaker, evident in lines 38-40: “Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing.” He is rendered speechless, his senses fail, and he is suspended between life and death, "Looking into the heart of light, the silence" (41). Amplified here is a moment of epiphany, which can be tied to De Nerval’s description of his visionary state. He describes a moment where "everything in nature took on a new dimension; secret voices called out to me (…) I could grasp the mysterious turns taken by the language of my companions (…) Everything is alive, everything is in motion, everything corresponds" (6). In a way, the hyacinth garden scene is Eliot's version of this Nervalian "correspondence." It is a moment where the material world reveals enlightenment, or a spiritual "heart of light." However, for Eliot, the moment is futile. Instead of De Nerval's sustaining vision, the speaker is left numb. The epiphany leads not to knowledge but to an emptiness, as indicated by the line "I knew nothing." The ecstasy is inseparable from a kind of death, a failure to communicate or sustain the moment, immediately undercut by the next line.

The opening of The Burial of the Dead, particularly this image of a "dead land" being planted with a "forgetful" memory of a cruel April, reminded me much of how, in Basevi's review, burial rites are theorized as originating from a primal, pragmatic act of abandonment, leaving the weak behind. Eliot's landscape is denied a sacred return to the earth. Also, the faith prevalent in the Orthodox Greek Church, where chants like “What delight of life continueth unmixed with sorrow?”, is absent in The Waste Land. The fear Eliot describes in the hyacinth garden and with Madame Sosostris reflects a world where the visions of Ezekiel have been reduced to a meaningless “handful of dust.” This is the proper "burial" of the modern "dead," a meaningless end in a spiritually barren world, where even the act of burial cannot confer meaning or hope.

Eliot's original epilogue for The Waste Land sets the moment up with a great intensity resulting from personal clarity that the published epilogue lacks. Conrad's question of "Did he live his life again?" is in pairing with a final reckoning of a "supreme moment of complete knowledge." Together, Conrad implies that regardless of the circumstance, true "knowledge" or "meaning" can be achieved. Kurtz's final note of "The horror! The horror!" is a direct result of this clarity. Relating it back to The Waste Land, Eliot conveys that "horror" very much exists in a modern world of judgement and cultural decay, but the final cry of recognition provides a final confrontation of the truth. In contrast, the published epigraph is completely detached, and the focus is not on a prevailing moral "horror" but rather existence itself. Because Apollo has granted Siblyl longevity, she has foreseen all the decay and despair that the poem describes, but she is trapped beyond the human scale of a single life. Her knowledge has, therefore, become a curse. Unlike Kurtz’s moment of final knowledge, the Sibyl’s plight is eternal. Her answer, “I want to die,” is not a climax but a constant, weary refrain. She is suspended, trapped, and preserved but utterly devoid of life or vitality. She is not dead, but she is not truly living either. This is the state of the inhabitants of the waste land.

“The Waste Land” evokes the sympathetic link between the ruler and the land, echoed in Weston’s From Ritual to Romance. Weston traces how, in the earliest Gawain versions of the Grail legend, the land is suffering from a “fruitfulness of a Waste Land, the desolation of which is… connected with the death of a knight.” This is not a coincidence but a fundamental principle of ancient kingship magic, which Frazer’s The Golden Bough extensively documents. Frazer shows that in rituals surrounding figures like Adonis or the Shilluk kings, the vitality of the divine or semi-divine ruler was believed to directly control the fertility of the crops and the health of the people. A "maimed king" like the Fisher King therefore necessitates a "waste land." Eliot’s title captures this exact symbiotic decay; the spiritual and moral sterility of the modern world is a direct reflection of its "wounded" leadership and lost connection to life-giving forces. Also, the title connects to Frazer’s broader pattern of dying and reviving gods. The "waste land" is the state of the world during the god’s dormancy: the period of winter when Attis is dead, Adonis is in the underworld, and Osiris is dismembered. The fertility rituals Frazer describes are performed to end this barren period and ensure the god’s return and the land’s revival. Eliot thus uses the title to position post-WWI Europe within this primordial cycle. The poem’s landscape is one where the rituals have been forgotten, the god has failed to return, and the inhabitants are trapped in a perpetual state of sterile waiting, unable to effect their own renewal.