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Pages of War: T. S. Eliot and ‘The Waste Land’

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Read part one of this series here.  Part two.

T. S. Eliot has often been criticized for his poetry’s inaccessibility to the average person, and “The Waste Land” is no exception.  It’s easy to read and think, “this guy is really just showing off how smart he is”-his Latin inserts, obscure Shakespeare and ancient Greek references and highly abstract ideas just seem like a pretentious work of art, which may very well detract from the emotions of the piece.  I felt this way the first time I read “The Waste Land.”  I had no idea what was going on and no clue as to what separated one section from the next.  If you’re an average level reader like me, I would recommend the method I had to adopt for this one (I did the same thing with “Paradise Lost”).  Go to either Shmoop (my personal favorite) or SparkNotes and read the chapter or section summary, then turn around and read the book’s same chapter or section yourself.  I know, websites like these are blasphemy-but if the alternative is getting lost in language beyond my grasp, I choose to read the notes of those that had studied it first and catch up a little.

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Comments

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  • Luke Ryan

    Thanks for reading! A lot of literature is like this; it's just nice to realize that someone out there feels the same way you do. That's why rebellious music often appeals to teenagers--they're in the middle of realizing that a lot of the way adults act is this big facade, and how disingenuous that is. Just knowing that there are people out there that share their distaste for the whole facade is pretty cathartic.

  • Luke Ryan

    Haha yes! They helped me a lot when I was studying literature more. I could sit there and probably figure it out, but for someone like me (not so smart), reading Hamlet is going to take months without help, to really really absorb everything. I'd rather only take a week, and Shmoop allows me to do that. I still definitely read it! I just read Shmoop first.

  • Susan B

    Thank you, Luke. You certainly made it relevant. Looking forward to part 2. I would have loved to have had access to Shmoop or SparkNotes when I was in school. We had to slog through literature the hard way...and use Cliff Notes when we needed a clue. When it came to James Joyce and Proust, I would have loved to rely on the condensed version. lol

  • Michelle B

    This: "Sometimes you just want to read something that illustrates how you feel." I think that's what sucked me in about modern military-war writing in the first place, the struggle to find adequate words to articulate the complexity and chaos on the inside while surrounded by a culture fixated on fleeting entertainment and the accumulation of shiny new things. "We read to know that we are not alone." ~Shadowlands Thank you for these articles.