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Thinking activity of The Waste Land by T. S Eliot

"The Waste Land" has long been considered T. S. Eliot's masterpiece. In its five sections, he delves into themes of war, trauma, disillusionment, and death, illuminating the devastating aftereffects of World War I. The poem's final line, however, calls for peace with the repetition of "shantih" (the Sanskrit word for "peace").
Part I opens with the famous line, "April is the cruellest month." The speaker, Marie, is a young woman who bears witness to the physical and emotional devastation caused by the war.

Parts II and III describe the inside of a wealthy woman's bedroom and the garbage-filled waters of the Thames, respectively. Part IV eulogizes a drowned man named Phlebas.


In the fifth and final part of the poem, the speaker "translates" the thunderclaps cracking over an Indian jungle. The poem ends with the repetition of the Sanskrit word for peace: "Shantih shantih shantih."


1) what are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land?' Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nitzche's views?  Or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mythohistorical answer to the contemporary malaise?

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher and cultural critic who published intensively in the 1870s and 1880s. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with modernity. Many of these criticisms rely on psychological diagnoses that expose false consciousness infecting people’s received ideas; for that reason, he is often associated with a group of late modern thinkers (including Marx and Freud) who advanced a “hermeneutics of suspicion” against traditional values (see Foucault [1964] 1990, Ricoeur [1965] 1970, Leiter 2004).



=  Eliot is regressive as compared to Nitzche. Eliot has used many myths  in his poem Waste Land. And people learnt from past. People has the knowledge about wrong things. For example : if they had bed experience or done mistakes then in present they do not repeat the history.


2) Prior to the speech, Gustaf Hellstorm of the Swedish Academy made these comments? It is true that giving free vent to the repressed 'Primitive Instinct'  lead us to happy and satisfied life?  Or do you agree with Eliot's view that salvation of man lies in the preservation of the cultural tradition?



=  Freud and Nitzche both are the contemporaries but their background and field of working is different. Eliot believed in preservation of cultural traditions which means all together but Freud is believed in individualism and talked about primitive instinct.


3)  Write about allusions to the Indian thoughts in 'The Waste Land'.  (Where, how and why are the Indian thoughts referred?)

=   There are many references to Indian spirituality in "The Waste Land".

1) Ganga


    River Ganga is known for its purity and also for purification. Eliot finds the solution of all contemporary problems in spirituality.

2) The Fire Sermon:-
    'The Fire sermon'  is also the name of one of Sermon given by Buddha. Eliot gave same name to the third part of his poem. The whole poem describe the theme of sexual peversion.

3)  Shantih Mantra:-

=  The Shantih Mantra is for inner peace,  peace that passes understanding. Eliot enda his poem with this mantra and with hope. 

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