T.S. Eliot: Inward Pain and Outward Brilliance

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born September 26th, 1888 during what can be called an age of transition and could quite possibly be named one of the best poets of the 19th century. He wrote many poems of memories of childhood and bitter visions of various times in his life. Later in life, his craving for writing theatrical dramas took over. His most famous and celebrated work is the long and perplexing poem, The Waste Land, which took him nearly a year to finish. T.S. Eliot had a life full of conflict and pain, but this became his fuel for writing some of the greatest literary works of all time. From the very beginning, he was different from the rest of his family, perhaps because of the considerable age difference between him and his siblings. He was one of the seven children that Charlotte Champe Stearns, a school teacher, and Henry Ware Eliot, a merchant, had brought into the world. The Eliot family was all-around very well respected, and gave the city they lived in its distinctive and elevated tone. Eliot was more sensitive than the rest of his large family, and him being the youngest of his six siblings was partially to blame for that. Regardless fo how many children she had, Charlotte always told him how special he was and how he was an important addition to the family. Much of Eliot 's time was spent reading since he did not have much in common with his much older brothers and sisters. Eliot began to actually prefer being alone rather than socializing with others. He was incredibly introverted so the gap of intimacy grew larger between him and his peers. His supportive and loving mother was one of his only friends. Eliot 's incredible self-respect can be credited to his mother, who only spoke to Eliot as an equal. However, Charlotte was also very overprotective of her youngest son, and this kept Eliot from participating with his friends in various activities such as sports. Because Eliot had been born with a double hernia, Charlotte feared his

Cited: Bloom, Harold. Bloom 's BioCritiques. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003. Chiari, Joseph. T.S. Eliot: Poet and Dramatist. London: Harper & Row, 1972. Gish, Nancy K. The Waste Land: A Poem of Memory and Desire. Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers, 1988. Moody, A. David. The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot. Great Britain: University Press at Cambridge, 1994.