The Waste Land: Part II

Any relationship can be compared to a game of chess. You can cheat, you can make no moves and be stationary forever, and you can give up and do something else. The title of part ii is A Game of Chess and it is fitting because the speaker tells a story of a failed relationship.

The relationship is found at the end of the poem mostly. The speaker is at a bar talking about her relationship with her friends. This woman has many kids, probably poor, does drugs and stays out late at the bar so often that she can say goodnight to everybody there. Her husband only stays with her because she relieves his sexual desires. "He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time, and if you don't give it to him, there's others will." She has had five children already, so they are obviously not using protection, because more kids means more childcare money. This relationship fails because there is no love. The man just wants sex, and the woman is stuck giving it to him. She took drugs to abort one of the children, and she already looks so "antique" so she can't really get another man.

There is a rape in the first stanza of the poem. "'Jug Jug' to dirty ears", "so rudely forced." This supports failed relationships. "Jug Jug" is the rape that occurs and her hair is "spread out in fiery points" She is pissed. Then she "would be savagely still." She is dead. Spiritually or physically is undefined, but it could be either one. It is more likely a spiritual death, but the speaker says nothing about the rapist killing the victim.

There is a repetition of words that represent the roots in Part I. "My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think." First the speaker is asking for words. When words do not come out, she searches further, she asks what he is thinking. This idea of searching the roots to find the problem goes back to the seasons changing and covering up the memories. "The forgetful snow." Then the speaker goes on and repeats the word nothing many times. The word nothing represents death. When there are no words to be said, and no thoughts to be thought, there is nothing and the relationship is dead. "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"

A Game of Chess supports death as a theme by the relation to failed relationships. People do kill themselves over the end of a relationship because it is an escape. Some things are worse than death.