Fragmentation and Coherence in Eliot's the Waste Land
Fragmentation and Coherence in The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an intricate poem that is intentionally difficult to understand; it contains a myriad of allusions to other texts, it has a fragmented narrative structure, speaks in various languages and utilizes surreal imagery. These features, amongst others, contribute to the poem’s complexity. I wish to examine, in detail, how these features create or suppress meaning. In The Waste Land the reader is presented with a series of stanza’s from several different speakers. These different speakers give a disjointed, elusive account of The Waste Land forcing the reader to deliberate on what The Waste Land is and if a cure for this barren land is suggested, or is it merely enjoining the reader to despair in a nihilistic vision of the twentieth century. The poem is ‘not a seamless narrative, but a set of lyric moments’(Donoghue, 121). These moments are broken up by different narrators, in different settings, that seem unrelated. However, this series of disassociated tales creates the desire to somehow discover the underlying narrative. ‘The Waste Land seduces the reader into a search for the linear progression of conventional plot, for a structure more logical and unified than simply the "felt relationship" between focal points of emotional intensity.’(Kinney, 273) This suppression of a complete and understandable narrative could be interpreted as form subverting meaning. The poem is disjointed and incoherent in other ways that could also be seen as form subverting meaning. There are various uses of imagery throughout the poem. These images resist definition; they refuse to represent a unified idea or concept. They often seem to represent a set of opposites. For example, a recurring image within The Waste Land is water. However, water seems to represent both life and death. ‘Fear death by Water’(55) and later it is water that is longed for to give life in the barren land ‘If there were water we
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an intricate poem that is intentionally difficult to understand; it contains a myriad of allusions to other texts, it has a fragmented narrative structure, speaks in various languages and utilizes surreal imagery. These features, amongst others, contribute to the poem’s complexity. I wish to examine, in detail, how these features create or suppress meaning. In The Waste Land the reader is presented with a series of stanza’s from several different speakers. These different speakers give a disjointed, elusive account of The Waste Land forcing the reader to deliberate on what The Waste Land is and if a cure for this barren land is suggested, or is it merely enjoining the reader to despair in a nihilistic vision of the twentieth century. The poem is ‘not a seamless narrative, but a set of lyric moments’(Donoghue, 121). These moments are broken up by different narrators, in different settings, that seem unrelated. However, this series of disassociated tales creates the desire to somehow discover the underlying narrative. ‘The Waste Land seduces the reader into a search for the linear progression of conventional plot, for a structure more logical and unified than simply the "felt relationship" between focal points of emotional intensity.’(Kinney, 273) This suppression of a complete and understandable narrative could be interpreted as form subverting meaning. The poem is disjointed and incoherent in other ways that could also be seen as form subverting meaning. There are various uses of imagery throughout the poem. These images resist definition; they refuse to represent a unified idea or concept. They often seem to represent a set of opposites. For example, a recurring image within The Waste Land is water. However, water seems to represent both life and death. ‘Fear death by Water’(55) and later it is water that is longed for to give life in the barren land ‘If there were water we
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