The Waste Land 389the fragments that serve to connect them. The story
of Tristan and Isolde, which is referred to as a story
of thwarted love, continues this theme. Also, in
this section the readers are given the promises of
seeing something greater than their shadows, but
nothing is ever produced. The reader is told in the
section’s final lines that the narrator is the double
of the reader, but this suggestion is never brought
into play again, leaving the reader to question this
proposition.
“The Game of Chess,” which follows part 1,
sustains two major narratives. The first is the dis-
cussion of what to do. The conclusion is: nothing.
The narrator finally suggests several distractions,
ending with a game of chess. How will this cure
the nerves of the woman who asks what to do? The
answer is: probably not much. In the same way, the
discussion between the narrator of the pub story
and Lil ends before we truly find out the ending.
Before we can find out whether the narrator is a
well-meaning friend or someone who schemes for
the attention of Lil’s man Albert, the bartender calls
for last drinks.
In “Fire Sermon,” Eliot introduces the figure of
the blind prophet Tiresias, whom he claims joins all
the characters of the poem into one consciousness.
Tiresias sees and suffers the fates of the various
characters but can do nothing to prevent them.
The tryst between the typist and her lover is a good
example. The man comes and moves immediately
to a sexual encounter while the typist is merely glad
that he is done and gone away. Tiresias suggests in
the section’s final lines that history repeats itself
through the comparison of Carthage with London.
This idea is continued in “Death by Water.”
The maelstrom of “Death by Water” that passes
Phlebas through the stages of his life and back
shows the utter futility and desperation of the
modern condition. The whirlpool passes Phlebas
from stage to stage and acts upon him from outside,
forcing him into various positions. The new truth
of modernism, as demonstrated by World War I, is
that men and women are controlled by the society
around them to a greater extent than even before.
In “What the Thunder Said,” we see the theme
of futility most clearly. The trek into the waterless
mountains and the search for a grail that cannot be
found offers a clear sense of futility. The Fisher King
cannot be healed, cannot fit all of the fragments
together and, like Coriolanus, struggles in a prison
of his own making. In the end, the poet closes with
a blessing that is stripped of meaning by its partial
utterance. Traditionally, “om” would have preceded
shantih in the benediction. Without “om,” the word
of completeness, the shantih becomes an empty form
that has lost its meaning.
Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot develops the
theme of futility through the medium of outside
pressure. The whirlpool in “Death by Water” is the
most obvious, but the crowds moving over London
bridge and the public opinion represented by Lil’s
friend all point to peer pressure and societal forces
that push and pull the individual. There is nothing
to be done unless this societal ill, this need for the
grail, is solved, and Eliot suggests that it cannot be
solved. The end of the poem leaves little doubt that
in a godless, materialistic world, there is no way out
unless we, the prisoners, reject the prison we have
been born into.
Jeremy BrowntraditiOn in The Waste Land
The Waste Land is a poem that both embraces and
shrinks from tradition. The poem eschews tradi-
tional verse forms and structures, but at the same
time it is built of allusions to traditional works.
Some of this ambiguity can be explained through T.
S. Eliot’s later views of the poetic tradition.
Eliot believed that each poet must make his
or her own place in the poetic tradition, which he
explains in the essay “Tradition and the Individual
Talent.” The poet, according to Eliot, must be aware
of his tradition and must attempt to bring some-
thing new into it. The poet should be conscious of
the past but not let any youthful infatuations guide
his vision of how to create: The poet should create
something new and adjust the tradition to accept
this new item. This process can clearly be seen in
The Waste Land. The poem is extremely conscious
of the past but radically breaks with it. There are
no rhymes (except in a few sections), and the vast
majority of the poem is in no uniform meter. In this
way it rejects the traditions of 19th-century poetry
and attempts to develop something new.