Waste Land Essay: Journey Through The Waste Land -- T.S. Eliot Waste L

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   T. S. Eliot drafted The Waste Land during a trip to Lausanne, Switzerland to consult a psychologist for what he described as mild case of nerves. He sent the manuscript to Ezra Pound for editing assistance. Between them the draft was extensively edited and published in 1922. As a modernist poet, Eliot struggled to remove the voice of the author from his work but the work is still a reflection of the author’s interpretation. He paints the picture as he sees it for the readers to view and interpret from their own perspective. The Waste Land could be viewed as a chronicle Eliot’s difficult and not quite successful journey to confront his own unconscious or spiritual reality. â€Å"Viewed psychologically, Eliot’s juxtaposition of scenes of sterility, fecundity, and sacrifice represents the speaker’s conscious awareness of a sterile society, and his abortive attempt to experience the unconscious† (Jones 22). Eliot’s depict ion of a spiritually empty and lost society is a reflection of his inner search for a life-defining spiritual faith. Eliot’s message is that modern man leads a very hollow and disconnected existence because he has abandoned his spiritual values in pursuit of material wealth. Eliot begins The Waste Land by bemoaning the fact that spring exudes false hope through its evidence of new growth and destroys the numbness and warmth acquired during winter’s hibernation from life or feeling. The return of feeling brings renewed acknowledgment of the emptiness and barrenness of modern life. â€Å"What Eliot wants to highlight is the pain of coming back to life† (Torrens 24). He expresses the cause of the pain in the description of the stony and barren landscape in which there is no shelter and nothing can grow. Man’s spirit can... ...aracter of his poetry after his conversion. Bottum however would argue that although he possibly found a personal faith he was never quite able to present that faith in his later works. â€Å"What we encounter in his late poetry, however, is a profound confusion of faith with a brilliant and learned man’s rational understanding that he needs to have faith† (Bottum 23).    Works Cited Bottum, J. â€Å"What T. S. Eliot Almost Believed.† First Things. April 1996. 21-6 Eliot, T. S. â€Å"The Waste Land.† The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. 6th Ed. Vol 2. Ed. Maynard Mack. New   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  York: Norton, 1992. 1751-64. Jones, Joyce Meeks. Jungian Psychology in Literary Analysis: A Demonstration Using T. S. Eliot’s Poetry. Washington D.C.:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  University Press, 1979. Torrens, James S. â€Å"T. S. Eliot: 75 Years of ‘The Waste Land.’† America. 25 Oct 1997. 24-7.