The Waste Land

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing ''Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

The Waste Land is T. S. Eliot's most famous poem, as well as the most famous Modernist poem. It is mainly about how the world is hopelessly lost and how life cannot be regenerated. It is also incredibly confusing.

Written in 1922, the work is now in the public domain in North America; the full text is available at Wikisource, Bartleby.com, and Project Gutenberg.

Not to be confused with The Waste Lands, the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series.


 * All There in the Manual: Eliot's annotations. Except that they just raise further questions.
 * As the Good Book Says...
 * Bilingual Bonus: There are some lines that are in German, French, and Italian, and some Sanskrit words.
 * The Latin epigraph translates to: Once with my own eye I saw the Sybil of Cumae, hanging in a jar, and the boys were saying to her: "What is it you desire?" She responded, "I wish to die."
 * Oh, and the dialogue there is in Greek.
 * Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The narrator in the first "Unreal City" section talking to Stetson. "That corpse you planted last year in your garden..."
 * Perhaps not as squicky as it first appears; "That Corpse" might refer to the Corpse Flower, whose fragrance resembles rotting meat.
 * Though, considering that he just mentioned the battle of Mylae...
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: When he calls out to the "hypocrite reader" in Gratuitous French.
 * Casanova Wannabe: The house agent's clerk in The Fire Sermon.
 * Catch Phrase: HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME.
 * City Noir: Unreal City
 * Crapsack World: It is The Waste Land after all.
 * Creator Breakdown: Both he and his wife suffered nervous breakdowns during the writing of this poem, hence it is no wonder it is so confusing.
 * Dead Person Conversation: With Stetson. Tiresias also mentions doing this during his career as a Hellenic mystic.
 * Did Not Do the Research / Artistic License: The Madame Sosostris section of The Waste Land mentions some made-up tarot cards. Eliot owned up to it, though-- it was harder to do research in the days before The Other Wiki. He was apparently also wrong about what "c.i.f." stood for.
 * Emotionless Girl: The typist home at teatime.
 * Grail Quest: The poem draws heavily upon Arthurian sources -- indeed, the central conceit revolves around the original Fisher King and his devastated kingdom as a metaphor for Europe in the wake of World War I -- and T. S. Eliot structures the entire poem as a Grail Quest, with the Grail itself a savior for the wounded land. Ultimately, though, the Quest is subverted, as the Grail does not magically appear at its end; instead, the poet suggests that it is up to the individual to find his own salvation.
 * Gratuitous French, Gratuitous German, Gratuitous Italian, and Gratuitous Sanskrit.
 * Hermaphrodite: Tiresias.
 * Historical Domain Character: Marie, Countess Larisch from the beginning of The Burial of the Dead.
 * Intrepid Merchant: Phlebas the Phoenician and Mr. Eugenides, sort of.
 * Ironic Echo: Some of the allusions, like all that nightingale business. Also some internal examples, like "death by water" and the "pearls that were his eyes".
 * Lampshade Hanging: "The fragments I have shored against my ruins," at the end of the poem; referring to fragmented sentences he put before this line. Also, the second part of The Burial of the Dead mentions "a heap of broken images" -- like the poem itself.
 * Law of Inverse Fertility: Lill from the end of A Game of Chess.
 * Literary Allusion Title: Parts three and five are allusions to Buddhist works, and part one to the Book of Common Prayer.
 * Lying Creator
 * Once More with Endnotes: Provided by Eliot himself.
 * Public Domain Character: Tiresias and the Fisher King.
 * Mind Screw
 * Narrative Poem
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Way towards the cynical end.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: All these different linguistic registers in one poem.
 * Shout-Out: It even ends with a massive list of all of its allusions.
 * Tarot Motifs: Specifically in the third vignette of part one.
 * The Ingenue: The hyacinth girl, at first.
 * Written Sound Effect: "jug jug," "twit twit twit," "co co rico," etc.
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: See "Shout-Out".
 * World of Symbolism