The Waste Land: Part I

The Waste Land starts out with a quote from Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon. In this quote Sibyl is asked what she wants and she says she wants to die. This sets the mood of the poem right away, making death a main theme. Death being wanted, death is something that characters in this poem will want to escape to.
Next there is a dedication to Ezra Pound, with a sub note that translates to, "The Best Blacksmith." This is fitting because he "...is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry." Says Poets.org. Blacksmiths create solid swords and armor for great warriors just as Pound creates poetry so powerful, it can move people who don't even like poetry.

The first stanza has one speaker. They tell that April is the cruellest month because it brings life out of the dead ground. The life must be polluted then right? The speaker says this new life mixes "memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." This means the rain falls on the roots/beginning (memories) of the cause of death, and sprouts them back to life. They already died, so they already failed. Why then are they brought back? That is what I get from the first four lines.
Next, the speaker says, "winter kept us warm" because it covers the earth in "forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers." Winter is usually associated with death while spring brings life. The first four lines put down spring and these lines here tell why winter/death is more comforting. In death, you can forget your bad memories, allowing you to move on a little.

The next stanza is a different speaker. The speaker asks again, why do the plants sprout back to life? "What are the roots of that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?" Death is favored here by people, but nature seems to think otherwise, always finding a way back to life. However, the shadow theory we see here is interesting, and backs up the idea of death being great. The speaker says your shadow strides behind you in the morning, while at night it is rising to meet you. Morning can represent spring, everything is coming to life. People are waking up to go to work and school, and things are getting done. Evening represents death. The sun has gone to sleep, dandelions close into themselves at this point and things die. So the speaker says your shadow, which could also be an inner/more important self, stands with you in death. So you aren't completely lonely.
The next allusion is on line 30 with the handful of dust. It symbolizes the story in which a woman asks for eternal life but forgets to ask for eternal youth. She gets old and useless and is therefore stuck in life and her only escape is death. This supports the theme of death.
This speaker goes on and tells us a failed relationship. "I could not speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light, the silence." Then a quote translating to, "desolate and empty the sea." This quote puts the end note on the previous lines. Their relationship is the sea and it just so happens to be desolate and empty, neither alive or dead. It is stationary and silent. This relationship fails, but not too extremely.

Part I of The Waste Land supports death as a main theme. Death is found in the seasons, and in most relationships. Most of the time, death is the better option because it can set you free from the worst predicaments.