1. • Name: Khanjaniba M Gohil.
• Class: MA (Part-2nd).
• Semester: 3rd.
• Roll no: 13.
• Paper Name: The Modernist Literature.
• Topic: Collage images of the poem “The Waste
Land” by T.S.Eliot.
• Suggested by: Dr.Dilip Barad.
• Dedicated to: The Department of English,
Smt.S. D. Gardi & B. V. Gardi,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji,
Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar.

2. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Contribution in literature from 1905 to 1965.
Nobel prize in Literature (1948).
“ Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1915.
“ Four Quartets” in 1944.
Seven plays.
Grand father William Greenleaf Eliot had
established Unitarian Church.
Mother was a social worker namely Charlotte
Champe Stearns.
Childhood passed nearby a big river.

3. Background to the poem
• The poem is written as a tribute to Ezrapound.
• Poem was published during so many distruction in
his life.
• His wife Vivien was suffering from disorder.
• So the frustration of his struggles is reflected much
in this poem.
• It approaches to despairs an sorrow.
• Poem is difficult to understand because it has effect
of fragmented images.
• What we called it as a ‘Collage’.

4. Parts of the poem
 The Burial of the dead.
 A Game of Chess.
 The Fire Sermon.
 Death by Water.
 What the Thunder Said.

5. The Burial of the dead
 Starts from season, mixing memory and desire.
 Image of Madame Sosostris , as a clever woman.
 Unreal city and hypocratical people.

6. A Game of Chess
 Things in Xylograph in Lady’s chamber.
 Myth of Nightingale which is inviolable.
 War event is sketched through ‘Fiery points’.
 Extra marital affair of a lady.
 Albert : Second world war’s warier.
 “Good night, ladies, good night,
sweet ladies, good night, good night”.

7. The Fire Sermon
 Sermon= sut/ sutra.
 River Thames, became dirty.
 Rat as a symbol of death.
 Mrs. Porter reference to a prostitution.
 The typist woman and Tiresias .
 “ Burning burning burning burning
O Lord though pluckest me out
O Lord though pluckest”.
 Burning ideas Of Buddha.

8. Death by Water
 Water as a part of human life.
 Phlebas: Self ego is considered by him, was a
Fabian sailor/ merchant.
 He was drowned himself in a sea.
 Kleanth Brook’s poem “ Life in death, death in life”.
 Gujarati writer AKHO, who always thinks that only I
can, nobody else.

9. What the Thunder Said
 Frosty garden: Jesus was carried away(religion).
 “ He who was living is now dead”.
 Dead mountain- recurring time and again.
 Death of God and God never dies: conflicts.
 Falling towers: Capitals of post civilizations.

10.  Da: Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata.
 Datta- God.
 Dayadhvam- Humans.
 Damyata- Demons.
 Gandhiji: “ Nature has everything to satisfy the
needs of humans, but nothing to satisfy “.
Shantih shantih shantih: a silent ( muteness).