my homework

I wrote this at 11:30. I will now write all responses at 11:30 because I am quite proud of this. So much voice. Because it was 11:30 and i didn't want to write this. The Wasteland is fascinating. 

Modernism Techniques for ‘The Wasteland’

Though ‘The Wasteland’ is packed with literary techniques, it especially highlights the modernists. The allusions used by Eliot are impactful, not only because of what they are referring to but that there are so many and so diverse. In lines 395 to 422 he refers to a Hindu parable and then has a Bible reference in lines 309 to 311 and then goes straight into Greek mythology.   The effect of this is that he obviously makes himself sound super well-read but it goes along with one of the themes of the Wasteland- that life is nonexistent and things that are supposed to bring life don’t.  The amount of original lines in the Wasteland are outweighed by those talking about or quoting other works- a poem that is supposed to be a collection of ones finest thoughts are nothing but recycling of others old, used and worn ones.

The imagery in this poem is starkly different from that of the romantics in that the romantics used imagery to paint a beautiful picture using beautiful words comparing things to the more beautiful parts of nature. Eliot uses imagery to paint a sexual and graphic picture of life drawing on the war and disillusionment with technology and God. The whole 5^th paragraph of The Fire Sermon describes in detail the meaninglessness of sex. Line 116 talked about ‘Where dead men have lost their bones’, line 193 ‘White bodies naked on the low damp ground/ And bones cast in a little low dry garret’ painting vivid images of death in the most unholy form. The romantics would have wanted to believe that all death leads to rebirth- giving your body back to the earth helps grow flowers and such, but Eliot points out that death with war does nothing but destroy you. If you survive you are changed, unproductive sexually, emotionally etc. and if you died it was gruesome and unnecessary.