The Waste Land 1V

“Phlebas is an integral part of the poem… he is needed ABSOLOOTLY where he is.” Ezra Pound

Write a critical appreciation of “Death By Water” and its relevance to “The Waste Land” with particular focus on language, form and structure.

 “Death By Water” is the fourth section of Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” and could be interpreted as the pinnacle point of the literary piece. Eliot’s shortest section conveys the moral message behind the whole poem through its traditional structure, rhyming couplets and reminiscence to the written techniques of Aesop’s fables and parts of the Bible.

“The Waste Land” was written in 1922 and is composed of 5 sections: ‘The Burial of the Dead’, ‘A Game of Chess’, ‘The Fire Sermon’, ‘Death By Water’ and ‘What The Thunder Said.’ It was dedicated to Eliot’s friend and editor Ezra Pound, who unlike Eliot felt it necessary to keep section four of the poem, deeming Phlebas as an ‘Integral part of the poem.’ The title of the section “Death by Water” may contextually be linked with Eliot’s personal life at the time the poem was written. Like many parts of his later work ‘The Hollow Men, the title of this section could reflect the slow and painful deterioration of his wife’s mental state and their marriage. Drowning is a horrendous way to die and Eliot may have seen his marriage and lack of spiritual fulfilment as a horrendous way to live.

           

Phlebas is ‘A fortnight dead’ but still only just ‘Entering the whirlpool’ which, judging by the time the poem was written, indicates a link to the soldiers of WW1 left to rot in no-mans land; deprived of a proper burial, their bodies just wasting away. Also ‘A fortnight dead’ could be written in reference to the two weeks Eliot spent in a hotel on the Thames prescribed by his doctor in order to have him recover from his depression. Perhaps he felt it so difficult to be in isolation with his own despair that he wished he were ‘A fortnight dead’. The theme of despair, the physical reality of death and the knowledge that decay triumphs over all is evident here.

Structurally, “Death by Water” is deliberately after “The Fire Sermon” depicting society’s desolation after WW1 and the loss of amorous importance concerning sexual activities, ending with the repetition of ‘burning’ and pleas to God to end the madness. Water obviously quenches fire but Eliot uses the liquid to describe another horrible death rather than salvation in “Death By Water.” “Death By Water”, as it is on face value the simplest section of the poem, could be seen as a respite between the two much longer and complicated sections of three and five, with the same themes such as death, resurrection and life depicted in a more condensed and understated fashion. The reader utilises all previous understanding of the other sections to interpret this ‘fable’. “Death By Water” fulfils the prophecy given by Madame Sosostris in “The Burial of the Dead”, she advises “Fear death by Water” and “Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead” has drowned, sacrificed for the common good. Eliot uses this sophisticated and subtle technique to link the poem together structurally.

“Death by Water” is the only section without use of different dialects. The use of line breaks and space makes it easy to read with no enjambment, Eliot’s intention being that the section is the easiest to comprehend and interpret. Eliot’s use of certain repeated words links the themes of the poem together: “Dead” recurs eight times and “Bones” seven, these words fitting into the same semantic field which creates images of life, death and the tentative possibility of resurrection. The sibilance of “Seas swell” and the alliteration of “Phlebas… Phoenician… fortnight… forgot” creates an image of the motion of the water flowing back and forth repeatedly, ceasing for no one, merciless.

“Profit and loss” signals that Phlebas was a merchant. The fact that he “Forgot” about his money shows what little worldly treasures matter after death and an educated reader would recognise Phlebas as the Phoenician sailor, one of the tarot cards used by Madame Sosostris in “The Burial of the Dead”.  This link with tarot suggests a hint about the darker side of religion, as tarot cards are often associated with black magic; Eliot has already foreshadowed the tone of “Death By Water”.

“Death by Water” does not show a continuation of Eliot’s experimentation with form and free verse in comparison to the other sections of the poem, as a ten-line stanza written in rhyming couplets “Swell…fell” and “Jew… you”, it creates the most traditionally formal section of the poem. The moral message is emphasised by Eliot’s writing the section in a format reminiscent of Aesop’s fables or Biblical passages.  Phlebas is a chained metaphor. He is repeatedly referred to throughout the poem although apart from this section not by name; he is the drowning Stanbergesse sailor and the man whom Madame Sosostris predicts will drown in “The Burial of the Dead”. “Death By Water” signifies the ideas of renewal and regeneration by hinting at primitive fertility rituals; Phlebas is given as a sacrifice so that fertility will come again to the land. This is wholly relatable to the legend of the Fisher King, (whose impotence rendered the land infertile) and how people travelled to try and heal him to restore fertility to the lands.

The water is described as having “Picked his bones in whispers” which personifies the sea and shows it getting into his body and into his soul, all encompassing him; Eliot’s own spiritual turmoil could be a reference here. “He passed the stages of his age and youth” almost displays the dead Phoenician as reflecting on his life as the sea unravels his body and “Gentile or Jew” shows that class is irrelevant here, all will die in the end and have to look back on their life, their mistakes and regrets. This is in contrast to the previous section which is entirely about the class divides and their unhappy sexual relationships; the woman described in “The Fire Sermon” first thinks after sex “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over”. This is the only section directed at the reader; in all the others the poetic narrators were addressing different people. “O you” and again “You” makes the section personal and reinforces the moral message. “Turn the wheel and look windward”, as well as having obvious nautical references, is also showing how everyone is trying to direct their lives and find direction. This is true of Eliot at any rate in his search for spiritual salvation. Eliot is telling the reader to “Consider Phlebas”, to recall our own mortality and this connotes the idea of vanitas paintings as Eliot is forcing the reader to think about death, just as the paintings forced people to look at death.

Eliot uses an omniscient narratorial voice in “Death By Water” to achieve the complexity and depth of the section whilst commenting on society’s reliance on scapegoats. We blame the innocent when there is no one else to blame and the use of caesuras emphasises each of Eliot’s points, “Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you”. A religious connotation of this section is God sacrificing Jesus on the cross, his greatest act of omnibenevolence just as innocent Phlebas is given to God in an attempt to aid the common good. Eliot describes Phlebas “Entering the whirlpool”; this could be in reference to the whirlpool of history and cultural references present in the rest of the poem.

Phlebas links together the entire literary piece and in my opinion he is essential in conveying the moral message that Eliot is trying to communicate to post WW1 England. The section “Death By Water” could stand on its own as a poem but Eliot’s integration of it into the organised chaos that is the rest of the poem offers respite for the reader and a chance to reflect on themselves, which was Eliot’s intention. I agree with Ezra Pound entirely, “Phlebas is an integral part of the poem… he is needed ABSOLOOTLY where he is.”

The Hollow Men

 To what extent is “The Hollow Men” reflective of T S Eliot’s search for fulfilment? Discuss this in reference to language, form and structure.

“The Hollow Men” by T S Eliot was written in 1922 and is recognised to be slightly different from his other work: indeed Allen Tate noted that 'The mythologies disappear altogether in ‘The Hollow Men’’ which indicates that in this critics view Eliot’s previous poems displayed a more abstract style. Contextually the poem was written between WW1 and WW2, seven years into Eliot’s failed marriage with Vivienne Haigh-Wood and five years before Eliot converted to Anglicanism and became a Warden of his local Parish. Subsequently, his desires for sexual and spiritual release feature strongly as themes in “The Hollow Men”.

Firstly, in the title “hollow” is used to show the men as being void of emotion, of human characteristics. Eliot also uses “stuffed” and “empty” to describe the men; this creates the image of scarecrows filled with straw with no human aspects apart from their shape; stationary and inhuman. Scarecrows are essentially ‘fake humans’ used to scare birds, Eliot’s scarecrows look outwardly real but perhaps their form is somewhat deceptive or false, they lack content. The juxtaposition of all three adjectives, “hollow”, “stuffed” and “empty, especially as they are repeated, reflects Eliot’s need for more. “Death’s dream kingdom”, Death’s other Kingdom” and “Death’s twilight Kingdom” are nearly repetitive of each other, and the use of ‘dreams’ and ‘twilight’ creates imagery of uncertainness, a lack of solid reality which is apparently real to the men but also deceptive as our subconscious can sometimes control our thoughts. The lack of expressive punctuation (which would give a more emotional human feel to the poem) leads the speaker to read these lines in a monotonous tone, with no expression, indicating the mood of the men. As Eliot is clearly referring to heaven or hell or purgatory, this shows that what the men are searching for is spiritual release; the repetition of these words reinforces their desperation.

            This theme is further explored with the repetition of “eyes” throughout the poem. In the second section, “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams” shows that the poetic speaker fears judgement: eyes witness and are therefore Judges of us; they connote Judgement Day and therefore St. Peter at the gates of heaven. The fact that he “dare not meet” them shows that he is scared of facing up to reality, perhaps he has done something wrong; however during the poem his opinion and desires change. He describes the men as “Sightless, unless/The eyes reappear”, showing that his preference to blindness and stagnation is the end to purgatory either way, heaven or hell. The couplet in the fourth stanza, “The eyes are not here/ there are no eyes here” suggests a circling of imagery, a never-ending wait to be released from purgatory. Eliot’s personal live purgatory could be his failed marriage, as Vivienne’s apparent mental instability and the fact that divorce was still frowned upon in the 1920s meant that he was stuck.

            The hollow men are completely stuck as well, reflective of Eliot’s personal life. The couplet following the first section “Shape without form, shade without colour, /Paralysed force, gesture without motion” shows their stagnation; “paralysed” is obviously an unwilling lack of movement, nobody chooses to have their physical independence taken away from them by being unable to move. The hopelessness of the men is shown with the use of caesuras, so the poetic speaker has to pause in the middle of both lines to emphasise each of Eliot’s points. The men need movement to be able to do anything, without it they are possibly only as good as the scarecrows that Eliot’s choice of language suggests

            In the third section the almost repetition of “This is the dead land/ This is the cactus land” creates imagery of the desert, the wasteland where nothing can be found and again connotes purgatory and stagnation, reflecting the unhappiness of Eliot’s marriage and his need for fulfilment. There is no life here, as there is no life in his marriage. “Fading star” is symbolic in the poem and could either again be reflective of Eliot’s unhappy marriage, the light going out, or have Christian connotations; the 3 wise men followed the star whilst searching to find Jesus, the fact that the star is “fading” could suggest the difficulties Eliot is having at this stage in his life in finding God. In the next section the “perpetual star” symbolises the only hope of the men, the “empty” men. Perhaps God is Eliot’s only hope in his disturbed personal life.

            The fifth section begins with a subversion of a childhood rhyme, ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush.’ ‘Mulberry bush’ is a female phallic symbolism equivalent with connotations of fertility and of the female sexual organs, but Eliot subverts the meaning completely by re-writing “Here we go round the prickly pear”, reflecting his own sexual frustrations as there is nothing inviting about a cactus. His wife being ill and their marriage an unhappy one it is possible to deduce that the detached couple did not have a healthy sexual relationship at the time the poem was written, however lack of evidence does leave this point open to debate. The words “prickly pear” are intentionally harsh and horrible to hear, the alliteration of the hard consonant more apparent with the repetition in the rhyme. The imagery created by the warped nursery rhyme, of men dancing round a cactus in purgatory singing is absurd, but shows their attempt at retaining normality whilst they lose touch with reality. They may be finding some comfort in childhood memories, especially if they have nothing pleasant to look forward to.

            The final section of the poem begins with italics  (the subverted nursery rhyme) and ends with italics, which creates a circular effect and the sense of being trapped, reflecting Eliot and the men’s fruitless search for release. It is split into 3 stanzas using 3 separation lines, possibly reflective of the Holy Trinity and again reinforcing the religious element of the poem. Each stanza begins with “Between” showing the men’s inability to move, as well at the wider themes of falseness, deception or lack of reality and every second line begins with “And”, the repetition makes it easy to understand and again forces the speaker to read in an expressionless voice, empty of hope and emotion. The stanzas all end with “Falls the Shadow” which sounds very final, as if the end is finally near for the men. Shadows are dark spaces traditionally feared by children due to their lack of light and connote danger, in this instance death or the human failings of the men. 

            “For thine is the Kingdom” separates the first and second stanza and is repeated after the third. This is a line near the end of the Lord’s prayer which is often spoken at the end of church services and is the pinnacle prayer for Christians: the men may be trying to repeat it now as an attempt to find reassurance and comfort. Eliot’s use prevents the flow of the poem and makes the rhythm stagnant, as if the men are trying to get the words out but can’t quite succeed, maybe just as Eliot attempts to find God but can’t quite succeed. “Life is very long” separates the second and the third stanza and shows the men’s desperate longing for death, life has become too long. “For Thine is/ Life is/ For Thine is the” is a reduction in the prayer and sounds almost like a broken record, the words dead and not quite finishable, reflective of Eliot’s struggle for release. The entire poem is about searching, and Eliot’s search for spiritual and sexual fulfilment is evident in the Hollow men’s desire to be released from purgatory.

            The use of three “This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends” sounds as if the men are stood on the edge of life and has apocalyptic connotations. As it’s a repetitive chant it sounds like a child’s nursery rhyme as does the prickly pear chant in the section before, but again presenting major ‘adult’ themes in unsettling children’s vocabulary, death and infertility have no place in an idealistic children’s world. “Not with a bang but a whimper.” is a very abrupt end to the poem, as death is a very abrupt end to life. Eliot’s use of bathos, the complete anti-climax finish to the poem is scarier than if the ending was an explosion of rage or passion: “whimper” sounds vulnerable and shows the loss of hope, emotion and humanity. It’s not what we expect of an apocalypse and this unsettles us more.

By Ella Upton

Word count (including quotes): 1441

Word count (excluding quotes): 1305

Hi Mr Croft

Hello Mr Croft

Please let me write it down rather than use this!