1. • Name: Khanjaniba M Gohil.
• Class: MA (Part-2nd).
• Semester: 3rd.
• Roll no: 13.
• Paper Name: The Modernist Literature.
• Topic: Collage images of the poem “The Waste
Land” by T.S.Eliot.
• Suggested by: Dr.Dilip Barad.
• Dedicated to: The Department of English,
Smt.S. D. Gardi & B. V. Gardi,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji,
Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar.
2. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Contribution in literature from 1905 to 1965.
Nobel prize in Literature (1948).
“ Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1915.
“ Four Quartets” in 1944.
Seven plays.
Grand father William Greenleaf Eliot had
established Unitarian Church.
Mother was a social worker namely Charlotte
Champe Stearns.
Childhood passed nearby a big river.
3. Background to the poem
• The poem is written as a tribute to Ezrapound.
• Poem was published during so many distruction in
his life.
• His wife Vivien was suffering from disorder.
• So the frustration of his struggles is reflected much
in this poem.
• It approaches to despairs an sorrow.
• Poem is difficult to understand because it has effect
of fragmented images.
• What we called it as a ‘Collage’.
4. Parts of the poem
The Burial of the dead.
A Game of Chess.
The Fire Sermon.
Death by Water.
What the Thunder Said.
5. The Burial of the dead
Starts from season, mixing memory and desire.
Image of Madame Sosostris , as a clever woman.
Unreal city and hypocratical people.
6. A Game of Chess
Things in Xylograph in Lady’s chamber.
Myth of Nightingale which is inviolable.
War event is sketched through ‘Fiery points’.
Extra marital affair of a lady.
Albert : Second world war’s warier.
“Good night, ladies, good night,
sweet ladies, good night, good night”.
7. The Fire Sermon
Sermon= sut/ sutra.
River Thames, became dirty.
Rat as a symbol of death.
Mrs. Porter reference to a prostitution.
The typist woman and Tiresias .
“ Burning burning burning burning
O Lord though pluckest me out
O Lord though pluckest”.
Burning ideas Of Buddha.
8. Death by Water
Water as a part of human life.
Phlebas: Self ego is considered by him, was a
Fabian sailor/ merchant.
He was drowned himself in a sea.
Kleanth Brook’s poem “ Life in death, death in life”.
Gujarati writer AKHO, who always thinks that only I
can, nobody else.
9. What the Thunder Said
Frosty garden: Jesus was carried away(religion).
“ He who was living is now dead”.
Dead mountain- recurring time and again.
Death of God and God never dies: conflicts.
Falling towers: Capitals of post civilizations.
10. Da: Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata.
Datta- God.
Dayadhvam- Humans.
Damyata- Demons.
Gandhiji: “ Nature has everything to satisfy the
needs of humans, but nothing to satisfy “.
Shantih shantih shantih: a silent ( muteness).