Universität Hannover, Englisches Seminar
HS: High Modernism, SS 2004

The motif of decay in The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

by

Anna Fedorova

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION... 3

2. THEMES WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO THE MOTIF OF DECAY... 4

2.1. THE THEME OF DEATH IN THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD... 4
2.2 THE THEME OF MEMORY IN THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD... 6
2.3. THE THEME OF SEXUALITY IN THE GAME OF CHESS... 6
2.4 ”THE THEMATIC REFRAIN” IN THE FIRE SERMON AND DEATH BY WATER... 8
THE THEME OF APOCALYPSE IN THE WHAT THE THUNDER SAID... 9

3. TECHNIQUES WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO THE EXPRESSION OF THE MOTIF OF DECAY... 10

3.1. THE CREATION OF IMAGES... 10
3.2. THE USE OF IRONY AND PARADOX... 11
3.3 THE ROLE OF THE SPEAKER IN THE POEM... 13

4. TO THE ISSUE OF THE INTENTIONAL FALLACY... 15

5. CONCLUSION... 15

WORKS CITED... 17

1. Introduction

In the epigraph to The Waste Land the Sybil, a woman with prophetic abilities, looks at the future and proclaims that the only thing she wants is to die. Her pessimism about the future is the first indication of the idea which develops into the central theme of the poem: the decay of the human civilization.
In this paper I am going to concentrate on interpretation of the motif of decay and its meanings in The Waste Land. The poem was published in 1922 and appears to be a typical literary example of Modern poetry. That’s why I decided to adopt the New Critical perspective for my paper. New Criticism is the literary theory which dominated in the early 20th century and was used especially for interpretations of poetry. In this paper I will refer to the main statements of the New Critical theory described by I. A. Richards.¹
The New Criticical approach states that every literary text is autonomous. Historical context and biography of the author are irrelevant for the understanding of the meaning of the text. The meaning of the text has to be found in the text itself. Hence, the New Critical approach is based on the close reading of the text.
An important assumption of the New Critical perspective is the belief that “every meaning is ambiguous”² and has more than one possible interpretation. In order to understand the meaning of the poetic text, the reader has to resolve the ambiguities. The New Critical theory argues that every literary text is complex. The text has a central theme, which unifies all other themes. Other themes should contribute to the central theme. In my paper I see the motif of decay as the central theme of the poem and want to show in what way other themes are related to each other to form the main idea of the poem - the breakup of the civilization.
Following the methods of the New Criticism, I will restrict myself to interpretation of the images which appear in the text, without paying attention to the historical, religious, social background of the poem. Since the New Critical approach implies the close reading of the text, I am going to work, for the most part, with the text itself (rather than with secondary sources) and go through the parts of the poem, pursuing three following issues:

• to describe the main themes, which are raised in the five sections of the poem, and show how they contribute to the motif of decay and to the complexity of the poem.
• to look at different levels of the text, searching for ambiguities and trying to resolve them.
• to describe main literary devises which are used in the poem ( symbols, images, metaphors, irony, paradox and s.o.) and to show how the author’s techniques contribute to the theme of decay.

Since the New Criticism holds the author’s personality as absolutely irrelevant to the understanding of the poetic work, I will allow myself some critique of the New Critical approach. Using some examples from T.S. Eliot’s biography, I want to illustrate that author’s biography and intentions can not be totally neglected, even if the literary text remains to be the main source of information and the subject for analysis.

2. Themes which contribute to the motif of decay

At first sight The Waste Land seems to have a fragmentary structure. The four parts are seen by most critics as fragments, which are not connected with each other thematically. In this part of my paper I want to show how the one can come across in every part of the poem, are related to each other to form the central motif of the poem and its different meanings.

2.1. The theme of death in The Burial of the Dead

The title of the first part of the poem The Burial of the Dead already indicates the main topic of the whole section, which is full of images of death. All images can be divided into those, which are concerned with the death of nature and those, which are concerned with a death of a human being. According to the New Critical theory, images should be explained through thematic oppositions. The following thematic oppositions form the idea of the death of nature in the first part of the poem:

a) spring (the birth of new life in nature) <=> winter (numb dream)

The first episode shows the change of seasons. April is coming, a happy month, which should symbolize the rebirth of nature after a long winter. But the spring is not welcome in the ”dead land”, which is ”covered in forgetful snow”. ”The dead land” prefers remaining in its present state of sleeping forgetfulness.

b) Fertility <=> sterility

[...]

1 Richards, I.A. Principles of Literary Criticism. New York: Brace and World, 1988

2 Empson. Seven Types of Ambiguity. London: Chatto and Windus, 1970, p. 1