This line comes from The Vigil of Venus, roughly translating to “when shall I become like the swallow?” The Latin, along with the em-dash and the “Oh swallow swallow” that follow are interesting especially when viewed in conjunction with the story of Philomela. The line suggests Philomela’s longing for transformation or escape, but the swallow itself is a problematic symbol. While her metamorphosis allows her to transcend her human form and escape her oppressor, it also represents the irretrievable loss of voice and agency. In this context, I think that Eliot evokes this myth again to express the breakdown of communication in the modern world. The inability to articulate trauma or sorrow pervades TWL. In Philomela’s case, the act of weaving her story into a tapestry suggests that language, when it fails to convey meaning, can be transformed into a form of visual representation or symbolic action. The swallow thus becomes a double-edged metaphor: on one hand, it allows Philomela to escape her human condition, but on the other, it forever silences her voice. The form of this final part of TWL can also be read with reference to Philomela’s story. Eliot alludes that in this world, ordinary modes of speech and storytelling no longer suffice, just as Philomela is unable to speak. The poet, like Philomela, is left to weave fragments of culture and myth into a tapestry of purpose, even if that meaning is incomplete or incomprehensible. This explains the calling-back of a lot of mythical sources mentioned earlier in the poem.

In the original Upanishadic myth, the gods, humans, and demons approach Praja-pati to receive a commandment. They all hear the syllable “DA,” but each understands it differently: the gods hear Damyata (self-control), humans hear Datta (give), and the demons hear Dayadhvam (compassion). Eliot reinvents this myth, focusing first on “Datta”—the edict for humans to give, or to practice charity or sacrifice.

In TWL, “Datta” shifts from a simple imperative of giving to something way more existential and perilous: the “awful daring of a moment’s surrender.” This phrasing elevates giving from a moral duty into an act of vulnerability, something that almost transcends human life. Eliot suggests that such a surrender—a moment when one gives fully, without holding back—becomes the defining, though invisible, aspect of human identity. This is not found in obituaries or the “empty rooms” left behind after death, because society often overlooks or fails to honor such moments of internal sacrifice.

Furthermore, Eliot’s decision to start with “Datta,” the interpretation of humans, is interesting. This choice inverts the order found in the original Upanishad, where the gods come first. This shift foregrounds the human experience and emphasizes the failure of humanity to live up to its potential for true sacrifice and charity. The gods, in their divine capacity, were originally called to control (Damyata), an interpretation associated with discipline and restraint. By focusing first on humans, Eliot is reflecting the inversion of spiritual priorities—humans, not gods, must now take on the burden of moral responsibility. In a world where the divine seems distant or absent, humanity must find its way, and the command to give takes on an almost tragic tone. We are commanded to give, but live in a world where this giving is forgotten or erased.

The vibe I got out of this line is the creepy motif of a doppelgänger and the unsettling psychological implications of the “other” that haunts the speaker. Both Eliot’s speaker here and the main character of Dracula, Jonathan Harker, confront spectral presences that embody their deepest fears and anxieties, suggesting that this “third” figure represents more than just a physical entity. It’s a shadow self, a manifestation of repressed desires, fears, and the destabilization of identity.

In Dracula, Dracula the character functions not only as a literal antagonist but also as a projection of the unconscious fears and desires of Harker. When he is trapped in Dracula’s castle, he begins to experience a split in his sense of self, feeling his identity destabilize under the influence of the Count. He states, “I am beginning to feel this nocturnal existence tell on me. It is destroying my nerve. I start at my own shadow, and am full of all sorts of horrible imaginings” (Stoker). This vampiric presence of Dracula is both external and internal—an embodiment of everything Harker represses within himself.

Similarly, in TWL, the “third” walking beside the speaker is neither fully acknowledged nor understood. The ambiguity of the figure’s identity—“I do not know whether a man or a woman”—reflects the same psychological dissonance present in Harker’s experiences with Dracula. The third figure, like Dracula, is elusive, undefined, and haunting, representing a part of the self that remains unrecognized yet constantly lurks at the edge of consciousness.

I was intrigued in this passage about Eliot’s use of sound and silence in this passage. The most significant sound here is the “dry sterile thunder without rain.” Normally, thunder typically signals an impending storm, a force of nature that is associated with rain and renewal and strength, particularly in desert landscapes where water brings life. In many religious and mythological traditions, thunder also represents divine intervention or communication—I’m thinking of the thunderclap accompanying the voice of God in the Old Testament or Zeus being the God of thunder in Greek mythology. However, in TWL, thunder is hollow: “dry” and “sterile,” literally incapable of life and disconnected from the vitalizing rain. This use of sound subverts its typical associations: rather than bringing life, the thunder is a dissonant echo of power without substance. The sterile thunder further amplifies the futility of hope, as it gives off some potential and hope (rain, renewal, salvation), but denies fulfillment.

Silence in this passage does not equal to stillness, but instead to an oppressive absence that heightens the sense of despair. “There is not even silence in the mountains” suggests that even the expected silence of a remote and secluded natural landscape has been perverted. In most literature, silence in nature is often portrayed as peaceful, meditative, or even holy. But the lack of silence in TWL is different. The silence here is almost anti-silence—a void. It emphasizes what should be present but isn’t: vitality and meaning. Eliot’s use of “not even silence” introduces a double negation that reflects the endless waiting for something that will never come. The silence is, in essence, louder than the thunder, because it is filled with the weight of absence. It is not a moment of peace or reflection, but one of desolation and the failure of human and divine communication.

The context of “Phlebas the Phoenician” here is reminiscent of the section in “The Burial of the Dead,” where Madame Sosostris presented the “drowned Phoenician Sailor” card. The earlier mention refers to The Tempest, “Those are pearls that were his eyes!” (I.48), introducing the idea of transformation after death. In The Tempest, the spirit Ariel uses these words to describe Ferdinand’s father as having become part of the sea, where his eyes have turned into pearls—a comforting image of transmutation that suggests there might be beauty or value after death. However, this idea is ultimately deceptive, as Ariel was merely making the claim to manipulate Ferdinand into believing his father is dead. The line thus plays with the notion of reality versus illusion, hinting at the possibility that death may not be as final or bleak as it seems.

However, the “Death by Water” section of TWL brings a return to the harsh reality of death. Phlebas’s body is not transformed into something beautiful or eternal, but instead decomposed by the sea, his bones picked clean by the currents. Where the first section offered the glimmer of transformation, here death is depicted as total annihilation—there is no afterlife, no rebirth, not even of the body. Phlebas’s demise suggests that once dead, even one’s past concerns—“profit and loss”—are erased, and the body is ultimately reduced to nothing.

This shift from the illusory comfort of Ariel’s words to the harsh reality of Phlebas’s fate shows a deeper commentary on the human condition. Whereas there was initially some sense that things might not be as bad as they seem, Eliot now reinforces the bleakness and finality of death, pushing away any hope of redemption or transformation.

This phrase contrasts with the redemptive movement of souls in Dante’s Purgatorio. Both works grapple with spiritual journeying, but where Dante offers hope through ascent and eventual reconciliation with the divine, Eliot’s speaker seems to remain trapped in a void of meaninglessness. In Purgatorio, souls on the mountain of purgatory are in the process of purification. Each soul is actively working toward redemption, seeking to purge itself of sin through penance and suffering in order to eventually ascend to paradise. The essential movement in Purgatorio is upward—literally a journey toward enlightenment and God. The souls here are filled with hope because even though they are not yet in heaven, they are on their way there. They can “connect” their present suffering to a future state of bliss, and every step upward seems to be imbued with meaning and purpose. Dante’s vision of purgatory, therefore, is not about punishment but about progress. Each level of the mountain represents a stage in the soul’s reconciliation with God. As Dante and Virgil ascend, they encounter souls who are undergoing this process with a clear sense of purpose, accepting their penance as a necessary step in their purification. This structured journey toward redemption offers a path to reconnection with God, the self, and others.

Eliot’s statement here, however, suggests a sense of existential stagnation. The speaker is caught in a state of disconnection, the repetition of “nothing” emphasizing the void in which they exist, unable to find any meaningful links between experiences, spiritual state, or the world around. Looking at this in relation to Dante, suffering in TWL is empty, as opposed to transformative. There is no purgatorial ascent, no hope of redemption through pain. The speaker’s inability to connect anything—“nothing with nothing”—reflects the crisis of suffering without meaning. The anguish experienced in Eliot’s world is not a path toward growth but rather a manifestation of spiritual desolation. This reflects the existentialist condition where individuals suffer in a meaningless world, devoid of divine purpose or connection.

The violet hour. A transitional moment between day and night, an hour suspended between light and darkness. Eliot borrowed this image from Sappho, who used it in her poems to evoke moments of emotional longing. Yet, in Eliot’s modernist vision, the “human engine waits” at the violet hour—the typist prepares for an empty sexual encounter, and the unreal city’s inhabitants return home from their day’s labor. Unlike Sappho’s tender line, “you bring the child to its mother,” Eliot’s use of the violet hour in his poem suggests a sense of detachment and emotional emptiness.

This is not the first time we’ve encountered this state of in-betweenness in TWL—we are reminded of Sybil and also introduced to Tiresias, another prophet. In the epigraph of the poem, Eliot invokes the figure of Sybil, the ancient prophetess who wishes for death but can’t ever die. She remains in a state of suspended animation—neither fully alive nor dead. Like the violet hour, the Sybil represents a state where things should be moving toward a conclusion but instead are stuck in stasis. Tiresias, a significant figure in TWL, is the ultimate representation of liminality. Having lived as both a man and a woman, he exists in a state that transcends fixed genders. His duality embodies both masculine and feminine features, rendering him a figure of insightful understanding, but also one of exile, neither fully belonging to one identity nor the other. Tiresias’s blindness is another form of in-betweenness—he cannot see physically but possesses prophetic vision, able to witness both the immediate scene (the typist and the young man) and the repetition of such encounters over time.

Through these various forms of in-betweenness—time, gender, life, and death—Eliot creates a vision of modern life that is fundamentally liminal. There is a continuous sense of confusion, lack of belonging, and disconnection.

"The Fire Sermon" opens with the broken “river’s tent,” immediately presenting not only the decay of nature but also the collapse of a sacred world. Eliot’s allusions to Psalm 137 amplify this decay. Rather than focusing solely on the biblical lament, Eliot uses it as a framework to emphasize the spiritual sterility of the contemporary world, which drives forward his critique of modern civilization’s degradation. The reference to Psalm 137—“by the waters of Leman I sat down and wept”—evokes the image in the psalm of exiles weeping by the rivers of Babylon, longing for their lost homeland, Zion. However, Eliot shifts this mourning from an ancient religious context to the modern world. Lake Leman (in Switzerland) represents a cold, impersonal stand-in for the biblical river, which I interpreted as a loss of connection not just with place but with meaning itself. Unlike the Jewish people in Psalm 137, whose grief stems from the physical exile and desire for a spiritual return to Jerusalem, Eliot mourns in a world where the possibility of return or redemption seems absent. The personal lament over “the waters of Leman” becomes a reflection of modern spiritual barrenness, a key element of TWL.

The contrast between the ancient outcasts’ sorrow and Eliot’s modern lament is significant. In Psalm 137, the outcasts weep over their separation from a sacred homeland, but their grief is directed toward a future hope—a potential return to Zion. In The Fire Sermon, however, the river and its surrounding landscape offer no such hope. The remnants of the past are polluted, and the nymphs, figures associated with myth and vitality, have “departed,” leaving behind an inert environment. This use of Psalm 137 is a way for Eliot to amplify his critique of modern civilization: where there was once a connection to something sacred, there is now only decay.

Jeannie’s point about the word “ITS” in “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” being a possessive pronoun rather than a contraction of “it is” prompted me to examine this all-caps phrase more closely, as it seems to appear randomly throughout the conversation between the narrator and Lil. Jeannie posed an interesting question: whose time is it? After reading through the passage several times, I would argue that this voice belongs to society or societal norms. The “it” refers to Lil: society is mandating that Lil’s time be hurried up. I read this phrase to be synonymous with “please hurry up Lil’s time.” More can be inferred through an inspection of Eliot’s choices on modifying this phrase.

We catch a glimpse of Lil’s life through this conversation: her husband Albert has been demobbed and “wants a good time,” and Lil has got to keep him occupied despite her “antique” look—a consequence of abortion pills. At only 31, she feels trapped in a relentless cycle of reproduction and societal expectations. This urgency to please Albert and conform to traditional roles reflects the limited agency she possesses. The repeated phrase suggests that her life is not merely her own; instead, it is contingent on external demands that dictate when and how she should act. The insistence on hurrying implies a lack of autonomy, where Lil’s worth and identity are dependent on meeting these imposed timelines.

Furthermore, using “its” to refer to Lil signifies a dehumanization that reduces her to little more than a vessel for reproduction and a means of pleasure. This reductionist view strips her of individuality, framing her existence solely in relation to the desires of others. The language itself reinforces a sense of ownership, as if her identity is defined by what she can provide rather than who she is as a person.

I was particularly interested in the multidimensional and various representations of women in this passage. Just as Angela said last year, in this part of the poem, separate stories converge. However, they share a similar theme—women whose lives have been defined and constrained by their relationships with men. Last year, after studying books one and two of Vergil’s The Aeneid in my Latin class, I focused my final paper on the book as a piece of sophisticated propaganda during the Augustan era to reaffirm traditional Roman values in the aftermath of political turmoil. Specifically, I focused on the female character Dido—how she stood out for embodying qualities typically associated with noteworthy men, yet met her tragic fate at the end of book four. Such was Vergil’s way of illustrating the consequence of women daring to transcend conventional roles. Dido’s transformation from a regal, autonomous ruler to a figure destroyed by unrequited love and abandonment is reflected in the way women are presented in Baudelaire’s and Eliot’s work.

In a similar vein, Baudelaire’s portrayal of the decapitated woman adorned in luxurious fabrics and jewels exposes the paradox of female beauty and power. The woman, once adorned and admired, now becomes an object of decay: “A headless cadaver pours out, like a river, / On the saturated pillow / Red, living blood.” Here, Baudelaire critiques the way society both glorifies and consumes women, reducing them to passive symbols of desire, even in death.

The first part of “A Game of Chess” also invokes this tension between female power and subjugation, particularly in its reference to Philomel, a figure from Ovid's Metamorphoses, who was raped by Tereus and transformed into a nightingale. In TWL, Philomel’s story appears as a reminder of female suffering: "Above the antique mantel was displayed / The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king / So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale / Filled all the desert with inviolable voice." Philomel, like Dido and Baudelaire’s martyred woman, is a figure whose pain is immortalized but also aestheticized. Her "inviolable voice" suggests that even in her forced silence, her trauma cannot be erased, much like Dido’s lasting curse on Aeneas and his descendants. Yet, her transformation into a nightingale also represents a form of agency reclaimed in tragedy, as her voice persists despite her violation.

This line is a direct allusion to Dante’s Inferno, specifically the lines where Dante describes the “wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace yet without praise” (35-36). This description seems to suggest a sense of mediocrity and uniformity among the living souls, people who, in life, took no firm stance. They existed in a state of moral indifference, uncommitted to any cause, and are thus condemned to a kind of spiritual limbo, eternally insignificant. Eliot’s allusion to this part of Dante’s Inferno in his depiction of the crowd flowing over the London Bridge suggests that the modern individuals in his poem, like those souls, are trapped in a condition of mediocrity and uniformity. The modern crowd, as described by Eliot, moves mechanically, their eyes fixed downward, devoid of individuality or purpose. There is a sense that these people are spiritually dead, existing in a mundane, middle state—neither fully alive nor fully dead, just like how Dante’s “wretched souls” are neither punished nor rewarded.

My further exploration of this phrase involved looking up the word “undone.” According to Oxford Languages, I learned that there are three distinct definitions to this verb: 1. To unfasten, untie, or loosen (something), 2. cancel or reverse the effects or results of (a previous action or measure), and 3. To cause the downfall or ruin of. These three distinct definitions of the word provide different interpretations to the sentence, and while they could be taken individually, perhaps Eliot intended the exact definition to be ambiguous. The first definition of the word “undone” suggests a sense of disintegration or unbinding. In the context of Eliot’s characters, it seems to imply that death has unfastened the ties that once held life, identity, and meaning together. The souls in the crowd, like those in Dante's Inferno, are unmoored from their previous existence. This "unfastening" could also hint at the loosening of societal or moral structures in the modern world, leaving individuals adrift in a meaningless, fragmented existence. The second definition of “undone” suggests that death has reversed or canceled something that previously existed, perhaps life, hope, or progress. This interpretation presents an existential anxiety—if death nullifies any meaning or progress achieved in life, what is the point of salvation or rebirth? Everything is a vain cycle of meaningless pursuits. The last definition of the word carries a connotation of destruction or ruin, which in the poem’s case, though not in the form of the physical body, this ruin is reflected in the decay of their spirits. Taken together, these different definitions of the word “undone” suggest the multiplicity of death—it could be seen as both a literal and figurative unraveling of existence.

An interesting three-way parallel can be drawn between the sailor’s song in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the narrator’s relationship with the Hyacinth Girl in TWL, and the recurring theme of the failure of love in the post-war era that Eliot delineates in his poem. The four lines of the german snippet translates to: “Fresh the wind blows / towards home: / my Irish child, / where are you now” (Wagner, 3). A young sailor sings these lines as he recalls a woman he’s left behind to escort Isolde to Cornwall in Tristan und Isolde. These lines induce a sense of longing and desire: the sailor wishes to return to his lover, but since he is bound by duty, he finds solace in the memory of their love. Similarly, the “hyacinth girl” in TWL revels in the memory of their first trip to the hyacinth garden—one that she cherishes and loves. Unbeknownst to her, the boy changed to be “a heart of light, the silence” (line 41). He doesn’t seem to feel the same way in return, and I wonder why that is. In a way, the preceding german fragment can be interpreted in the context of the hyacinth girl: the boy loved someone else before giving flowers to the hyacinth girl. He showered his previous lover, “the Irish Child,” with so much love that he has nothing left to give. His heart has become a waste land, barren in emotions. The hyacinth reference originated from the mythological story of Hyacinthus and Apollo--- a tale that further emphasizes the failure of love. In contrast to the unreliability and betrayal that love represents, death seems more welcoming and reassuring to the lovers. Apollo commemorates and in a way reconciles with his lover Hyacinthus by turning him into a flower stamped with notes of grief, just like how Tristan and Isolde reunite after dying in each other’s laps.

In this first stanza of the poem, we see a recurring theme of seasons appear. However, Eliot’s depictions of the seasons divagate from traditional representations of them since the very first line: “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land” (53). April, the epitome of the expected vitality of spring (a season of rebirth,) is described here with the infertility of the waste land. By personifying April as “cruel”, Eliot plays with an unconventional symbolism of seasons: spring brings discomfort and pain to the land because it forces life up on a spiritually barren world.

When I then moved on to consider the winter and summer imageries in the following lines, I saw a similar use of seasons as a means to reflect inner turmoil as in the Countess Marie Larisch’s book, “My Past.” In the ending paragraphs, the narrator awakens to the earlier dramatic and ominous events of the story with a sense of dread, but commented on the tendency for the anxiety to dissipate in the summertime than in the wintertime (6). In this story, winter is linked to an inescapable sadness, an inability to banish one’s worries. On the other hand, Eliot characterized winter as a season of numbness, covering the earth in “forgetful snow” (53). Winter is a time of stasis and preservation, where pain is deferred until spring disrupts this quietude by forcing life to return. Hence, while both the story and The Waste Land denote winter as a period of emotional or spiritual stasis, it is for different reasons.

Summer, meanwhile, seems disorienting to Eliot—”Summer surprised us”—almost as if warmth and life are unexpected and perhaps even unwanted. Yet, at the end of the stanza, the phrase “go south” finds resonance in the penultimate paragraph of the book: “‘O for the sunshine and warmth of the South’" (6). Summer and the desire to go south symbolize an attempt to escape the present states, but in both cases, this escape is complicated. In the story, the narrator realizes that the idealized south, the Riviera, is “perfectly impossible.” Similarly, in The Waste Land, the speaker’s actions of reading all night and going south in winter feel more like distractions than real solutions.

The original title of the poem, “He Do The Police In Different Voices,” originated from Dicken’s novel Our Mutual Friend, in which the character Sloppy reads newspaper reports in a variety of tones, mimicking different speakers. While an aspect of this choice echoes Eliot’s technique of blending different languages, perspectives, and cultural and mythic references throughout the poem, another intriguing facet can be unveiled through a deeper analysis of Sloppy as a “beautiful reader of a newspaper” (9). His ability to “do the police in different voices” reflects a talent for embodying the voices of authority figures and others in society, blurring the line between personal identity and social narrative. If Eliot had kept this title, it would have positioned the poet as a kind of ventriloquist, stepping into the roles of the voices he captures, making the poem less about detached observation and more about active engagement with the cacophony of modern life, just as indicated by the original first section of the poem: “The next thing we were out in the street…sopped up some gin, sat in to the cork game…then we thought we’d breeze along and take a walk” (3). However, in the final version of “The Waste Land,” the poet becomes a more detached observer, surveying the desolation of modernity from a distance. This shift is crucial to the tone of the poem, which no longer presents the poet as a mimic of society but rather as someone bearing witness to its fragmentation and decay. The tone of the title changes from playfulness to solemnity, a shift that is clearly reflected in the respective following sections.

“Preludes” serves as a fitting example of this detached narrator. Throughout the first three sections, the narrator offers a series of fragmented, disconnected snippets of urban life, illustrating the grimy, monotonous existence of people living in industrialized cities. The only time the narrator appears in the first person is in the penultimate stanza, the only complete person amidst images of fragmented people. This approach highlights the alienation and isolation inherent in the modern world, and the poet’s role is merely to record them as part of a decaying, impersonal landscape.

The title “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot draws on rich religious, mythological, and anthropological traditions, many of which are reflected in Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur and The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer. These works explore the cyclic nature of life, death, and rebirth that we see in rituals surrounding vegetation deities and the metaphysical connections between humanity and the natural world. For instance, the steroid world as suggested by the title, “The Waste Land,” aligns with the desolation of the Maimed King’s realm as a metaphor for his wound: “So therewith entered a spear wherewith he was smitten him through both the thighs, and never sith might he be healed, nor nought shall tofore we come to him” (5). The maiming of King Pelles is not just a physical injury but also symbolic of the kingdom’s spiritual and environmental decay. The fact that the king can “never” be healed represents a deep-rooted suffering that inherently affects the land. Turning the page to Part I of The Waste Land, we see Eliot utilizing imagery to procure a barren setting that mirrors the King’s sufferings. He writes, “A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water (53). A once-unified civilization shattered into “a heap of broken images,” the cultural remnants of society no longer cohere to a meaningful whole. Elements of nature, including the Sun and crickets, that are typically associated with solace and vivacity, are absent in this context, further contributing to the portrayal of a world bereft of natural vitality. A land is “waste” because the natural cycles of growth and renewal have been disturbed, much like how technology and industrialization have created a void where life and meaning once thrived.