The WasteLand: Part V

The first four lines of the first stanza talk about the aftermath of war, lifeless land and the shouting a crying of people affected by it. Eliot is referencing the aftermath of WWI. Rich and poor are affected by it, and that makes them all equal. This sort of reinforces the idea in the first poem that death is better than life. In this deathly wasteland created by WWI everybody is one, and there is some sort of peace among the people. Then the last four lines in stanza one, “He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience” represents the idea of hope.
The second stanza is about a wasteland. This land is dry and “one can neither stand nor lie nor sit.” In this wasteland, there is nothing you can do, because it is so dry. The people are in dire need of water. I think the line “If there were water” is one whole stanza. It is the symbol of hope they are searching for.
Stanza six (A woman drew her long black hair out tight) is about darkness. Bats hang upside down with “baby faces?” Bats represent darkness, but with baby faces? This is a way of saying there is still some good inside them, some hope. Here in this stanza, time becomes unimportant, and there is still no water. This is the lowest of the low.
The next stanza brings some life back to the picture. The grass is singing in the mountains, and there is a chapel, or a Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is symbolic of hope. It is the idea that there is something worth searching the whole world for that will fix everything. This stanza ends with rain, the water has arrived, and now the thunder speaks!
The thunder is god. He makes three main points, or ideas: Give, Sympathize, Control. He asks, what have we given, because in the other poems all there was were rapes and failed relationships. In WWI there were obviously failed relationships among countries. The Sympathize speech puts us all in one boat. It tells us that everyone is locked up, and this makes us equal, so there is no need to fight. Control is exactly what it sounds like. There needs to be control, in this world of no control. Team: Together Everyone Achieves More.
The next stanza is about the fisherman again! I like the fisherman. Anyways he has the grail but he is wounded and cannot regenerate his land. Another way to think of this is when you have searched your entire key ring for the right one to open the door, but when you get there, you find that the mop you were looking for isn’t in the room and you can’t clean the wrestling mats!
The last four lines are the happy ending of the poem. There is hope, and there is rain. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” is what Eliot saw after WWI. It can be related to Pangea. The world was united, and now it has fallen apart and there is no more teamwork. “Shantih Shantih Shantih” is the rain. It is the hope.