Unreal city

T. S. Elliot in the last stanza of the first section of "The Waste Land" gives us the whole image of London in the aftermath of World War I. He calls it the "Unreal City" because he sees the true value of this city as no longer existent. It becomes a dead city as a result of the destruction of the Second World War. This war makes the city lifeless. Although London is one of the most beautiful cities in winter, the poet gives it an ugly description when he says it has "brown fog" instead of using white or snowy fog. It is a hint of how much the smoke of industrialism affects the city's beauty. When he said "crowd flowed", he moves to describe the citizens of London while they are walking to their jobs at King William Street. They look like a flood. Of course such a resemblance reduces their humanity. They are like machines, "each man fixed his eyes before his feet" there is no human connection nor eye contact between those people. Their only purpose is to go to their work on the exact time. The poet was against all these materialistic orientations in London because it destroys the human and spiritual values of Londoners.
He personifies the sound of the church as a dead person. This is an indication to the church's position at that time. The morality of the church becomes worthless and religion is about to die because of capitalism. Then, the persona imagines that he meets a hero who died centuries ago in the battle of Mylae. Actually, Eliot brings this historical event to indicate that history repeats itself. All wars took place because of economic aims.
In this poem Eliot uses London as a symbol of all cosmopolitan cities affected by wars.