As Eliot notes already, this line is associated with Weston's From Ritual to Romance, particularly the chapter on the Fisher King. After reading this source, the most memorable takeaway is the idea that "The Fisher King is... the very heart and centre of the whole mystery" and that he is "the essential centre of the whole cult, a being semi-divine, semi-human, standing between his people and land, and the unseen forces which control their destiny." First, I am reminded of Tiresias, who connects all the characters in TWL, which compares to the Fisher King being the center of all. Perhaps the contrast is that Tiresias spreads over a wide spectrum of characters and themes, whereas the Fisher King stays put while the wide spectrum surrounds him. Then, the idea of the King "standing between his people and land" seems to reflect line 425. If "I" am "Fishing" where the sea of fish is in front of me, "with the arid plain behind me," then "I" am essentially in between the two. Could it be that "my" "people" are compared with the fish that "I" am fishing? Can we, humans, be deemed correlated with "the Fish", whose connection "with life, renewed and sustained, is undeniable"? Perhaps Eliot is tying back the idea of humanity being part of a larger cycle of life, death, and restoration, since Weston notes that "all life comes from the water".

Another observation I have is the diction of "shore". In the first line in this last stanza, Eliot composes the image of "I" sitting "upon the shore". However, "shore" is verbalized into "shored" in line 431. What seems to be a fixed setting transitions into an action, advancing this progressive cycle that evokes the imagery of the first section of TWL. Then, the idea of "I" (Eliot? Tiresias? The Fisher King?) having "These fragments" to be "shored against my ruins", alludes to finding fortification and stability (as the verb shore is defined as to support or hold up something) in "ruins", a wasted state. Maybe Dante's "Then he vanished in the fire that defines them" and De Nerval's "the prince of Aquitaine, his tower in ruins" that precede line 431 are the "fragments" that support the narrator among such "ruins". Am "I" "the prince of Aquitaine" who is stuck in "his tower in ruins" or am "I" the one vanishing in the fire and as Dante describes "as fish glide to the bottom through the water"? Nevertheless, these identities are "shored", maybe at "shore", because the three repeats of "Shantih" that closes the poem, which Eliot says represents "The Peace which passeth understanding", convey the idea of finding peace that comes with knowledge. Though as readers we are unsure of a lot in TWL, Eliot could've experienced personal clarity and revelation throughout writing and concluding his poem. Maybe Eliot has a hold of the Salmon of Wisdom; perhaps he has tasted its "flesh that confers all knowledge", which is why we deem him as a possessor of universal knowledge that transcends boundaries. This closure of peace that proceeds understanding and knowledge could be a response to the epigraph. Though Sybil begins with the mourning of such omniscience, maybe after experiencing TWL which stands for a microcosm of daily life and its tribulations, they, representing humanity, can find peace.

The recurring images of a prison in TWL and its associated sources are compelling. First, this instance of prison under Dayadhvam (be compassionate) appears to be a self-imposed imprisonment, specifically because "each confirms a prison" when only when "We think of the key". It reminds me of Geronition, when there are repeated images of "Tenants of the house" that alludes to the idea of the narrator being trapped in the mere construct of their own mind. The other instance of a prison is TWL's line 325-327 – "The shouting and the crying / Prison and palace and reverberation / Of thunder of spring over distant mountains". If one were to read through the enjambment between line 325-326, one could interpret the prison being the shouting and crying subject, thus personified. This leads me to wonder whether the idea of imprisonment is indeed a mere symbolic illusion, rather than something concrete and inert. This connects to Eliot's note for the line above, in which he connects Bradley's Appearance and Reality, specifically the line "In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it." The idea of "a circle closed on the outside" invokes the idea of a closed off separation, which is what a prison likewise achieves. The sphere's opaqueness also adds to this confinement. However, I suppose there are occasional instances where one can break from imprisonment. In this section of TWL, "the key" acts as the vehicle to unlock this prison; perhaps this act of turning the key adds to the state of being compassionate. In Dante's source "... until the next day’s sun came forth upon the world. / some few rays had made their way / into the woeful prison", implying the ability for the external to still seep into the internal despite such confinement. As these sun rays are able to defy the rigid prison, maybe this source of light is "the key" that unlocks "a prison" that is confirmed "Only at nightfall". As Brihadaranyka also wrote, "What truth is, the sun is." Perhaps truth is the key to unlocking the illusions of one's mind as depicted in Geronition.

Like Angela, I found the possibility that this additional, unknown being could be God interesting, especially how many sources were tied to this idea. First, Marudanayagam's source on the accumulation of individuals in a contained space reminded me of the line"Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit" (340). Then, the allusion to Lord Vishnu being the fourth person clearly begets the idea of a higher being, God perhaps, always by their side. Then, as Angela noted, "That third is God Himself—Providence," in The Brothers Karamazov, I found this notion tying to Shackleton's piece, in which the narrator states, "When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us... it seemed to me often that we were four, not three." Just as the saying goes, "You never walk alone"; perhaps Eliot is alluding to God always accompanying mere mortals in their daily acts.

I also found many quotes from sources that relate to the idea of being in between, especially in Dostoevsky's source. He writes, "Man, halfway between animal and a higher consciousness, has always a great deal within him to repress, to hide, to deny, in order to be a decent human being and to be socially possible." I'm so interested in the dichotomy, or perhaps the lack thereof, of men and animals, and culture being the defining and refining line between the two. As I have mentioned in previous annotations, the animalistic behavior of men during sexual encounters seem to recur in sources. I'm curious whether their predatory nature is in fact just their lack of repression. Dostoevsky also mentions "the dangerous moment of hovering between the Void and the All" and "In this man the outward and the inward, Good and Evil, God and Satan are united". The state of being in between and thus simultaneously everything at once seem to recur in the poem too, as we have declared Eliot that transcends intellectual and cultural boundaries.

Eliot has a playful approach with this line, just as he demonstrates through "Weialala... la la", "Twit twit twit / Jug jug jug jug jug jug", and many other instances. I'll refer back to this line at the end of this annotation, but for now, I am most intrigued by the connection between the hermit-thrush and water. First, Eliot's footnote deems that this bird's "water-dripping song is justly celebrated". The fact that the hermit-thrush's melody is described as "water-dripping" evidently alludes to the connection between the two. Yet, important to note is that this "water-dripping" trait comes from the bird's "purity and sweetness", which comes from Chapman distinguishing that this kind is "the sweetest singer of all American birds". Water is pure, probably the purest of all liquid substance. But is it sweet? In general, no. But maybe it is in a case of drought and a situation with "no water but only rock". If one is deprived of water for long, where one's "flesh longeth for [God] in a dry and thirsty land", I'd say one would be soured with overwhelming bitterness and dissatisfaction (Psalm 63:1). Even when the hermit-thrush appears, bringing its "water-dripping song", one's thirst is still not quenched by the intangible. The hermit-thrush, with "hermit" alluding to "solitude" (343), is not an actual source of aid, thus "There is not even solitude in the mountains / But red sullen faces" – their countenance red from dehydration or head perhaps. Moreover, the hermit-thrush "attracts little notice" and "often finds seclusion" as Chapman notes. Is the bird keeping its "water-dripping song" for itself, finding solitude that the poem, narrator (Tiresias?) is unable to locate? Mother Nature has a world of its own, maybe we just can't step beyond our line of humanity and into this nature's secrecy. Maybe the natural world is punishing us through this drought, stripping us from its natural resources. Thus, we are left with mere sound tempting us, just as springtime teases us with breeding lilacs out of the dead land, making us love again only to face loss in the wintertime. The hermit-thrush's song begins with two drips and drops but finalizes with the repetition of "drop". Does this allude to humanity dropping underground post-death? Are we going to be next to be planted in the dead land, just for the next generation to rise again? "But there is no water"; perhaps there won't even be a next to breed out of the seeds of our corpses. Maybe we'll just "drop drop drop drop" into the deep realms of Hell and never see the light of day nor hear the sound of water.

Though this section appears much more concise than the rest, I believe its brevity alludes to something greater, specifically the grand, infinite cycle of change through time. Death, evidently, is a natural stage in life. Though usually interpreted as the end of something, occasionally, and generally in TWL, death represents the beginning of something new. Thus, as Phlebas' death is portrayed in this scene, some part of him still lives on, as this corpse "passe[s] the stages of his age and youth / Entering the whirlpool", retracing moments of his life in a supposed afterlife. What's interesting is that Phlebas is still the subject of this action despite proclaimed dead. Though, "A current under sea" technically is the actual subject in charge of his corpse's motion, Eliot decides on sticking with "He" as the subjective noun, perhaps emphasizing the significance of humanity and its course. However, I believe nature still prevails over mankind. Pheblas "rose and fell" only because of the "current under sea"; without the sea's motion, this corpse would remain static. This theme is corroborated in multiple sources – Dante's "a whirlwind that struck the ship head-on" shows natural force over a mere manmade construct; De Quincy's depiction of "the treacherous sands gathering above [a woman's] head, so that "no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth".

Phlebas' rising and falling in the sea also reminds me of the references to motion and time in the sources. De Quincey's "from the rising to the setting sun" and the plot's progression over a storm at sea till dawn evokes the image of nature's cyclic continuity. Tennyson's "every hour is saved / From that eternal silence, something more, / A bringer of new things" further alludes to vitality (new things) that comes with time (every hour). Nature and mankind seem intertwined; their motions reflect each other. Or perhaps, nature actually determines human motion and status. As the sea is the one acting in this section, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that this body of water has committed acts, including death. I'm starting to think that the "by" in "Death by Water" is not a preposition that alludes to a location, but rather identifies the agent performing an action.

The sources regarding Tiresias most intrigued me for multiple reasons. First, they remind me of the hyacinth girl from the first section, who is alluded to go through this similar metamorphosis of gender. I wonder what Eliot is trying to get at through these personages. In his footnotes, he writes that "Tiresias... is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest... all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias." Could he be trying to use such figures to connect distinct themes and images in TWL, as he does so when he incorporates the symbolism of Tiresias in this section full of mundane human activity? It might be possible too that the entirety of TWL is what Tiresias sees. Maybe even Sybil

Another interesting idea is that Tiresias is an "Old man with wrinkled female breasts". My initial read of this phrase reminded me of Eliot's Gerontion, which he starts with "Here I am, and old man in a dry month, being read to by a boy, waiting for rain." I see a resemblance between TWL's old man and his counterpart in Gerontion, in which they are both waiting for something. In TWL, he "can see... the evening hour that strives / Homewards, and brings the sailor home from sea," While in Gerontion, the old man waits for rain, a body of water that can be see as in relation to a sailor on sea. This may be a far-fetched connection, but I wanted to note this observation. But going back to TWL, Tiresias, "throbbing between two lives" but attempting to unite all personages as Eliot notes, "can see" "though blind". This is worth delving into. It's interesting that even though Tiresias struggles between two sexes, this individual is always one gender at a time, never two at once. Nevertheless, Tiresias has a sense of all-knowingness and affinity as one alone. Does Eliot feel the same, as being one man alone who has knowledge over many different cultures and themes, which he attempts to present in a singular poem?

Last question/points – Ovid and Lempriere's sources seem to contradict. Juno seems to be a man in Lempriere's but a woman in Ovid's. Just wondering if they refer to the same character. Moreover, the fact Tiresias was cursed because of the statement that women have more satisfaction in sex and marriage over men seems relevant. Misogyny brings about curses, or perhaps misogyny is a curse itself.

Feet honestly appear a lot in TWL, as well as its associated sources. Line 65: "And each man fixed his eyes before his feet"; line 201: "They wash their feet in soda water"; and these two lines (296-297): "My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart / Under my feet." I'm also reminded of Eliot's "Preludes" where feet consistently reappear: "The grimy scraps / Of withered leaves about your feet", "With all its muddy feet that press / To early coffee-stands", "clasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands", "trampled by insistent feet"...

My first intuition is that feet lead the body – without feet, there would essentially be no movement; we would remain stagnant in a spot if we had no other means of transport. Feet also locate a person; we refer to ourselves being at a certain place based on where our feet stand. In this case, "My feet are at Moorgate" means whoever "I" is is at Moorgate, and "I" am only there because "my" feet have brought "me" there through movement. Essentially, feet determine the physical position of the human body, which is quite relevant because many events occur due to such human presence. For example, the many sexual events, possibly line 297's "event" too, prevail because a man, particularly his feet, has brought himself to be at a certain place at a certain time, for his step-by-step vulgar course of action to prevail.

Another thought is that feet are the lowest parts of the human body. The fact that "my heart" (I'm assuming it's referring to a woman's heart after the sexual, probably forced upon, event) is "under my feet", alludes to the low-spirited state of the woman. The man's steps to satisfying himself results in the woman's heart being where it shouldn't be, indicating a displacement of the body's most important organ proceeding the exploitation of the feminine human body. I think this reveals Eliot's take on such sexual behaviors – he disdains them; he thinks such indecent acts ultimately ruins the female state, as this physical disposition conveys. The female heart and soul are debased to the lowest of the lows.

Lastly, Matthew 7:6 states, "neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." and Augustine likewise confesses, "himself went before with the feet of charity, never swerving." The presence of feet is evident in these sources, and I wonder what Eliot's take on them is.

As we progress into the third section of TWL, we seem to arrive at a new setting too; instead of observing the dynamic between individuals that emphasizes gender and its norms (a human construct), we are now at the Thames, a more natural scene that "bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends...", proving barely any trace of human acts.

Time is a natural phenomenon, which will evidently be present in a section regarding the natural world. The Thames running softly demonstrates time. With time comes movement, and the running of this river shows the flow of time that continues. This reminds me of Marvell's "But at my back I always hear / Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near", which is fitting since line 185 clearly reflects the first line of Marvell's quote. It also evokes Laforgue's "The sunset reins in its chariot", which paints a similar image of the sun's natural descent, likewise resembling Marvell's depiction that "we cannot make our sun / Stand still". However, we, as humans, sometimes hope for the natural world to listen to us. When Eliot writes "Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long", he conveys the notion that "I" desire nature to be understanding in a way, to be "soft" while "I" weep and remain quiet. But evidently, time stops for none, and neither does nature. When "I hear / The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear", Eliot seems to be alluding to the natural phenomenon of death, just as Laforgue writes of "wisteria skeletons... Shrivelling out their deaths". Thus, even though "I" am not speaking loudly here and desire a time when "the river hushes" as Frankau writes in One of Us, "the rattle of bones" remains audible, proving nature's autonomy that humans cannot interfere. Carpenter in Towards Democracy also hints at the inevitability of sound through "The Thames runs down—with the sound of many voices" and "the waters make perpetual music".

A last slight observation is that "ear to ear" in line 186 resembles Frankau's One of Us, in which he writes "Body to body, breast to breast enfold her; Till eye with eye and lip with lip afire Kindle the answering fever of desire!"

I believe the quotations from line 111 to 126 are masculine voices questioning what a woman is "thinking of" and if she is "alive" since she "never speak[s]". On the other hand, between those comments and inquiries is a female perspective, keeping her thoughts to herself as those lines aren't voices and in quotations. It is only after line 130 that I think the quotations reveal the female's voice, specifically her worries, which are finally "audible". After the first stanza of this section, Eliot strays from a usual coherent form, but rather indents multiple lines and breaks this narrative into many fragments. As I was reading, I felt that it alluded to a female figure withholding herself. The long indentations in lines 118, 130, 135, for example, represent her hesitation before proceeding with anything; the empty spaces symbolize silence, the absence of voice and certainty, evoking Philomela's cut off tongue and Jesuit Black Bishop's Pawn saying that "Silence, if fair worth be in thee" to the Virgin White Queen's Pawn.

Because of my observations above, the symbolism of the game of chess becomes more significant. No one is mandated to speak in a game of chess; calculations and moves fulfill the game. In lines 137-138, Eliot depicts a woman planning to "play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door." The action of "waiting" is more explicit now, as opposed to mere empty indentations in the lines above, as the man waits for the woman's response like a player impatiently waiting for their opponents' next move.

But the woman waits sufferingly. Her "lidless eyes" allude to the fact she will not spare time to close her eyes and rest, constantly keeping an eye out for the man's next move without voicing anything. Merely "waiting for a knock upon the door" also resembles Mina Loy's poem in which many women are "Looking for the little love-tale / That never came true / At the door of the house." Why are these women just waiting, looking, seeking for things beyond their control? Perhaps the only aspect in their own control is their own death. Perhaps that's why Dido and Cleopatra committed suicides, because their premeditated acts, which as Rahul says is "a striking resemblance to chess [through] the strategy of sacrificing and abandoning pieces to reach an end goal." are opportunities to gain control.

As we progress into "A Game of Chess", we stray from the foreseeable cycle of life and death and the details of a mundane human nature in "The Burial of the Dead". I noticed the stark contrast in section titles during my initial read, and as I'm rereading it now, I still feel the contrast persevering throughout the context of this second section too. I, like Lauren from last year, noticed that "While [the first section] ends with imagery of sight, this section segues into the sense of smell."

I am most attracted by lines 86-93 for multiple reasons. First, the scent of "synthetic perfumes" can compare with the ashy smell that proceeds through "prolonged candle-flames" and "their smoke". These references remind me of Baudelaire's "A Martyred Woman" and the story of Dido and Aeneas. Objectively, the outset of this first stanza clearly resembles Baudelaire's piece; the diction, imagery, and embellishment in TWL seems to be a reflection of the martyred woman's death site. Then, the references of flames and smoke reflect Dido's death scene too, where "[she] ascends the pyre" just as how "these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle-flames, / Flung their smoke into the laquearia". Though the protagonist "she" of this section remains unknown for now, I'm curious if Eliot meant for her to resemble the martyred woman or Dido, who both died as hopeless romantics in their distinct ways.

Some final thoughts - Baudelaire's depiction of a decapitated woman whose death should be a sore to eyes is quite ironic; he embellishes the whole poem with promiscuous and materialistic details. Is it that even post-death, the female figure is a mere feed for "the thirsty pack of lost and wandering desires" of men? Is the imagery of a "headless cadaver" a result from masculine predators' meals? How does that relate to this section of TWL? Perhaps the martyred woman remains in "the chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble", like a mere trophy wife. Perhaps her death doesn't mean much, with her ashes merely "stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling" and adding further decorations, because only the king's fate truly determines the win or loss in a game of chess.

Since my initial read of TWL, I've felt the need to analyze the themes of sound, voices, and music on a deeper level. We already know that the working title of TWL was "He Do the Police in Different Voices", which hints at the multitude of voices and perspectives Eliot includes throughout his own work. Through combining all these voices, a cacophony occurs. Yet, in this selected line, "a dead sound" alludes to a silence of some sort. I began thinking about why silence concludes the tolling of bells when the clock strikes nine. Perhaps the living dead of the working class are dreading to work their 9-5. Perhaps they truly have been "undone" by the deaths of those around them, feeling less alive than the dead, warmer in winter than in spring. This entire stanza depicts a scene of a distraught English crowd, possibly affected by the dejection of war, or some other phenomena that brought spirits to an all time low. Yet, I find that this silence speaks louder than the voice that follows it. Are the people fed up with their initial "sighs, loud wailing, lamentation [that] resounded through the starless air", as Dante put it, when they mourned the deaths around them? Would they rather leave the "Unfamiliar tongues, horrendous accents, words of suffering, cries of rage, voices loud and faint, the sound of slapping hands" in Dante's Hell instead of bringing it to the grounds of London? Lucy from the previous year wrote that "In Eliot's imitation of these lines, the crowd of people greets death with much more acceptance". I think this true too; Eliot's people have accepted that they must navigate through the waste land they are encountering if they desire to survive, even if it means to suppress any more mourns, leaving only "a dead sound".

The allusion to eyes is present throughout this poem, as it is too in the related sources we had to read. Most generally, eyes perceive the present, as ours do right now. Yet they are also capable of taking a glimpse towards the future, as oracles and tarot card readers do, and reflect on the past, as a pair of retrospective eyes would. I feel that as Eliot writes this poem, his eyes do all three; he writes of his current state, and how the war from the past has affected the future, as even the first sentence "breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land" hints at a sequential growth from graves that symbolize past deaths. Thus, "my eyes failed" after a return from the hyacinth garden (Hyancinthus reincarnated as a flower post death possibly relates to the aforementioned beginning line of TWL) could allude to the failure of perceiving either the present, past, or future. Which one in this case? I'm not entirely certain, but considering that the next stanza refers to Madame Sosotris (inspired by Crome Yellow's Sesostris - a fortune teller), I think it could refer to the failure to know what comes next. Loy's "At the Door of the House" refers to women's eyes looking towards a desired future, but fail to do so too. "Those eyes... Looking for the little love-tale / That never came true / At the door of the house". The fact that their eyes attempt to look (find but also to perceive) for the "unrealisable", proves the incapability and possibly also futility of attempts to be all-knowing of the future. Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" also alludes to blindness of the future as a natural phenomenon, when Brangaene asks, "How could I have foreseen that it would cause you such grief?" and Isolde responds, "Oh blind eyes!" Brangaene's question seems rhetorical, because truly, how could one have seen the future? I feel that Eliot does not actually believe in the significance of tarot reading, fortune telling, or forward-looking eyes, because why else would he mention that Sosostris "Had a bad cold", other than the fact that he is mocking her somewhat ailing, incapable state?

Adding onto my previous annotation, one could argue that renewal is impossible without water, rendering "a heap of broken images" instead of a united, cyclical one. The implication of "shadow" is also quite relevant, I think. The word "shadow" recurs in The Burial of the Dead: "All things more fleeting than a shadow", "All is dust, all is ashes, a shadow" (6; 10). Perhaps the shadow refers to a fleeting stage of life, a temporary darkness, or a fluid object (somewhat like water), since "your shadow at morning" is "different from" "your shadow at evening". Annie from two years ago also caught on this point when she wrote, "shadow is compared to the transient and erratic nature of human life".

This seems very related to Sybil's fear of living ever since she desired to live as long as the number of dust particles in her hand. Also her life being measured by dust resembles "All is dust" in The Burial of the Dead source and Eccelesiates' "the dust return to the earth as it was".

Since my initial read of this poem, the word "rain" has caught my attention. When I analyzed A Room with a View last year, water was often a constant symbol of renewal, as the author created instances where downpour would clean a street fresh, or the river washing a character's item away. Thus, I don't think it is a coincidence when "spring rain" is stirred with "dull roots" in order to breed "lilacs out of the dead land"; in simple words, "rain", or even generally as Angela previously commented – water, relates closely with a cycle of renewal and revitalization. The theme of water is also prevalent in the sources for this section. In My Past, Marie writes about her and the Empress being overtaken by a storm, "soaked to the skin by a down pour of tropical rain" (4). It was only because of this instance of rainfall that they meet the widow of a fisherman, whose son "has been lying in the lake for seven years". (4). It might be relevant that the profession of fishing relates to water, and clearly significant that the widow's son has been close to water for a long amount of time, but the most eye-catching quote is when the widow says her son "will return" (4). I think the emphasis of returning in the future ties to the theme of a rebirth, which is obviously evident in TWL. Moreover, I connected Larisch's piece with Ezekiel's, which depicts a scene where the subject "I" remained by "Tel-abib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar" for seven days, until "the word of the LORD came unto me" (4). Perhaps the common number seven isn't all that significant, but the fact that both the widow's son and Ezekiel's "I" remain by a body of water for some time, where one's return is prophesized while the other receives the new word of the LORD, seems to hint at some sort of arrival in relation to water. A last theme of water occurs in Brooke's letter when he describes his friend's reaction to the news of war – "His consciousness was like the light scurry of waves at full tide, when the deeper waters are pausing and gathering and turning home" (3). The contrast between the two actions of one body of water relate to common sentiments possibly inflicted by the war era. This adds to the fluid, variable nature of water; there's so much water can do, renewal being one of them.

This epigraph, written in Latin and Greek, comes from Satryicon. It depicts the moment when Trimalchio recounts "when the children asked [Sybil] in Greek: 'What do you want, Sybil?” she used to answer: “I want to die.'" (4). The idea of desiring death when given immortality and omniscience, as Sybil does, is interesting, and also a consistent theme throughout Eliot's working drafts for TWL. His original epigraph refers to Heart of Darkness's Kurtz's fleeting moment of life before death, which is described as a "supreme moment of complete knowledge" that eventually invokes "horror" (4). Both Sybil and Kurtz, in a way, value death as an escape from their understanding of the horrors involved in the metamorphoses of life. Sybil disdains the metamorphoses of her bodily state; she acknowledges her lack of youth when she says, "such body as I have tiny, and my limbs, consumed with age, will reduce to the slightest of burdens" (1). In a way, she sees herself as a waste land; superfluous with years to live and bound to a waste of time, she deems her body as if it is a piece of waste. Kurtz is similar – he is ill; his health in a wasted state. The moment before his death he, too, is filled with superfluous knowledge; yet he cannot make use of it for death soon transcends him. The two epigraphs do resemble each other in many ways, and I'm curious about the exact reason as to why Eliot chose the one of Sybil over Kurtz.

These epigraphs also remind me of Eliot himself. We mentioned in our initial TWL class that Eliot viewed himself as a person capable of connecting universal knowledge and observations. Perhaps this poem serves as an outlet for his knowledge dump – a land to dispose all his thoughts, his waste. There are instances in Heart of Darkness that could reflect Eliot's grand perspective of the world too. Marlow describes Kurtz's stare as one "that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe" (5-6). Perhaps Eliot's broad acknowledgement of the universe isn't so much a blessing as it is a curse, unaware the candle's light amidst a world of darkness. Amelie touched on this last year, when she wrote, "Both Eliot and Sybil would be unable to full share their vast knowledge and thus feel trapped by the curse of wisdom". Moreover, Marlow deems the knowledge of oneself from the experience of living "a crop of unextinguishable regrets" (5). Assuming the diction "crop" relates to the theme of vegetation, perhaps life is the waste land that cultivates growth of regrets, just as a dead land breeds lilacs, and darkness reveals a sliver of candlelight.

As Eliot mentions in his prefatory note, From Ritual to Romance and The Golden Bough serve as sources of inspiration for much of the symbolism throughout his poem, and most conspicuously, the title. One can possibly assume that Eliot gleaned direct inspiration when Weston's writes about the attempted "restoration to fruitfulness of a Waste Land, the desolation of which is... connected with the death of a knight" (2). At a glance, this "Waste Land" refers to barren and infertile soils, unable to nurture vegetation. Yet, the fact that this wasted condition of nature is connected, or even caused by, "the death of a knight" alludes to the idea that Eliot could be referring to a declined state of the human condition as well. Weston, Frazer, and Malory all emphasize this correlation between nature (vegetation, plants, etc.) and humanity. Apart from the Grail quest that evidently supports this theme, Frazer also writes "For although men now attributed the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing certain magical rites they could aid the god" (4). Even though men understood their subservience to Divinities who controlled seasons and states of nature, they believed in their own capabilities of contributing to those natural states, asserting their place in and impact on the natural world. Moreover, when Nana, a virgin, "conceived by putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom" (11), this interrelation between natural produce and mankind becomes even more definite. Attis, Nana's son and the God of vegetation, thus becomes a genuine offspring of nature and human's mating, perhaps even blood related with those two parental concepts. Malory, too, refers to human blood being intertwined with nature, "as Abel had received the death under the green tree, it lost the green colour and became red; and that was in tokening of the blood" (6-7). Mankind cannot survive without nature; the "Waste Land" must take human perspective into account. Essentially, organic nature mirrors human nature, vice versa, and Eliot likewise reiterates this theme throughout his poem. "The Waste Land", full of references of a world post-man-inflicted war, renders not only its natural state desolate, but also humanity's bleakness, with hints of possible restoration and rebirth, as The Golden Bough concludes too.