Paper No. - 09 Spiritual Degradation in ‘The Waste Land’

Hiteshbhai C. Parmar• Topic :- Spiritual degradation in ‘The

Waste Land’• Paper Name :- The Modernist Literature• Paper No. :- 09• P.G. Enrollment No. :- PG13101024• Roll No. :- 09• Semester :- 03• Year :- 2014 – 2015• Date :- 01/10/2014

Submitted toSmt. S.B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar.

The Waste landBy - T.S. Eliot (1922)

• T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is one of the most outstanding poems of the 20th century. It has been hailed as Eliot’s masterpiece – the supreme triumph of the poetic art in modern times.

• The Wasteland is a poem about spiritual dryness, about the kind of existence in which no regenerating belief gives significance and value to men’s daily activities, sex brings no fruitfulness, and death heralds no resurrection.

• As affected by WW1, T.S. Eliot has expressed what he felt about his land in The Wasteland and how people gradually lost faith in god and spiritual decay is the main theme of the poem as because of it only his land is waste land.

• For his poem The Wasteland, Eliot had been reading the book by

Miss Jessie Weston’s ‘From Rituals to Romance’,

James Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’

What is a Myth?

• “A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events”

• A fictitious or imaginary person or thing.

Myths

Myth

Myth of Vegetation• These vegetation myths are based on

nature, Particularly on the cycle of the seasons.

• Spring is clearly a time of life and birth. Summer is the high tide of this life; in the fall things start to die, ending with the dark and dormant months of winter.

• Death-Rebirth-Death. This recurrent pattern is going continuously.

Poem Starts with : “April is the Cruelest month, breeding”

Myth of The Fisher king• The medieval wasteland of the Fisher King, a myth which is

closely related with the grail legend. In this wasteland soldiers of King Fisher ravished the nuns of the chapels. Perilous said to contain the Holy Grail. And because of that King became impotent and his land suffered from famine.

• The impotency of the Fisher King was reflected sympathetically in the land of which he was the head and ruler. It had become dry and barren, the haunt and home of want and famine. one day the Knight of the pure soul came and solve riddle.

• The sick King symbolises the sick humanity.

Myth of The Fisher king

Myth of Phlebas• The character Phlebas, the

Phoenician Sailor who dies by drowning.

• Symbolizes the chance of renewal in The Wasteland.

• Phlebas is the example; an example of a lack of spirituality, Self ego, and what becomes of those who waste themselves.

Myth of Tiresias

• Tiresias is represented as a bi-sexual in The Waste Land as he was blind but he has the gift of prophecy and immortality.

• Tiresias, a figure from classical mythology who was both male and female features and is blind but can “SEE” into the future.

Myth Holy Grail• The Holy Grail (cup or dish) legend is

associated with the king of Arthur and his knights of the round table. The Grail was the cup or plate used by Christ for his last supper, in that cup the blood of the Saviour was gathered when he was crucified.

• Grail was originally connected with the fertility myth, as it witnessed by its sexual symbols (cup and the lance symbolising the male and female organs respectively) but later on it suffered a sea- change through its association with Christ.

Myth of Sibyl• Sibyl a woman with prophetic power who

ages but never dies. • Looks at the future and proclaims that she

only wants to die.“I want to die”

• She typifies, the time woven soul’s desire to escape from the ‘Wheel’ of things. (Nirvana, Moksha, Salvation)

• The Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot see as his own: ‘He lives in a culture that has a decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its former glory.

• The Wasteland mainly throws light on the disillusionment and spiritual dryness of the post-war generation.

• Eliot has proved that history repeats itself, as the past and present are telescoped by the time or Tiresia that what happened in the past is happening even today, in modern age. Sexual perversion has always led to spiritual degradation and decay.

• Even in modern age, we can see the sins discussed above, It is all cause of spiritual degradation.

Conclusion

• Eliot’s wasteland resembles myths to show that how in modern wasteland even this kind of sin is committed by the people, and how people have lost faith in spirituality.