An Ode of Rejeuvenation in T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland"

In T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland", he seems to be saying that out of death and winter comes spring and new life. In order for there to be healing and happiness, first a pain must occur. The opening of his poem portrays this concept clearly while the rest of the poem seems to briefly brush upon that notion. At the time the poem was written, World War I had just ended placing the world in an era of depression, loss, and ultimately death looming over everyone. Eliot's own life was going through a dry spell where he was not receiving any inspirations or new ideas to write about. The world was a wasteland, and his life was a wasteland, but there still seemed to be a hope in the midst of it all. In order for things to improve, this feeling of pain and desolation had to be dealt with and pushed aside. Once that was accomplished healing and new beginnings could occur.

The world would be capable of savoring the happy times after having gone through such terrible times. Eliot compares this era of new beginnings to spring, since spring generally is symbolic of new life. However, unlike Chaucer, he does not imply that spring is necessarily a happy time, or that beginnings are happy. He simply says that spring is a necessity when dealing with pain that will enable things to become fully alive again. Eliot says that "April is the cruelest month" which mixes "memory and desire" (2357). Mixing memory and desire can be interpreted many ways. Often for something new, living, and less painful to happen there needs to be a desire for life. The desire is there because the memories of life in the past prevail. Gregory Jay says in his article that memories can also block the past, but April and a season of new life comes. As it arrives the life awakens passion pulling out the coldness. He calls this an "ode of dejection" that shows a form of hurt and feeling coming after the initial pain. Therefore, in his essay Jay argues that Eliot has taken Chaucer's celebration of life, and turned it into an ode of dejection (133). Another way of looking at Eliot's "ode of dejection" is that this "celebration of life" was written realistically to reflect Eliot's time. Eliot wrote "The Wasteland" during the modernist movement in the early twentieth century. An element of the modern philosophy led to poems being written about or with a sense of loneliness, dejection, and despair. This sense of dejection reflects his time, which was quite different from the medieval ideas implied by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales.

Most writers choose to write about issues that are of great concern to them at the moment. For example, Europe was in shambles at the time Eliot was writing. Many had died in the war, so life was not being celebrated (Smith 138). The poem may have been about dejection or celebration as it was something everyone was in need of. Eliot wanted to show people it was possible for them to handle all the death they had experienced. A healing process must occur in order for people to continue on with life. In line five Eliot writes, "Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow" (2357). This is a line which implies that people had not begun to come to terms with the death they had experienced. It still comforted people to feel depressed and cold, both feelings winter brings to mind. More confirmation that winter does not have life in it is found in the line that says, "A little life with dried tubers" (2357). Winter was the time right after the war, the time in people's lives where there was not much hope, yet it was a comfortable place to be in. David Spurr writes that "forgetful" and "snow" are compared nature. Giving snow a human quality makes the image stronger in Spurr's case showing a type of consciousness that pursues disorder in an inner world (23).

He says Eliot never unifies the disorder, but uses the inner imagination and looks out to the desolate sea the poem seems to display (26 ). This modernist idea of desolation supports the idea of the world being in disarray after the war, in this time of winter. After winter the discomfort truly begins to be noticed, the soothing feeling of depression is gone with the sharp sting of the thaw. Dull roots begin to stir in the rain, the lilacs begin to blossom, and life begins again. This is a cruel process according to Eliot. It is the healing process after the war that is painful, but brings people back to a similar existence they had before the war, one with less pain and more life. Edmund Wilson claims that the poem exhibits a "post-War world of shattered institutions, strained nerves and bankrupt ideals where life no longer seems serious or coherent" (Smith 138). Eliot may show in his poem that these things happened after the war, but he also seems to show that the shattered fragments of institutions and ideals can be rebuilt and reunified. As April, or this new season in time, begins the healing process can start, and these things can be reestablished.

"The Wasteland" portrayed "high hopes raised by the idealism of Woodrow Wilson", according to Maurice Bowra, a critic of the 1930s. Grover Smith, who quotes Bowra, claims it was Stalin's idealism and not Wilson's (138) sense of hope. However, whoever's idealism it was is not as important as the new hopes they had to try and rebuild countries and bring life to them again. These were desires determined after the war and are portrayed in the poem by the first few opening lines. The mixing of memory and desire is clearly seen here. The way the world was in the past is now being desired again for the future. There is hope that the world can go back to how it was according to Spurr (26). Smith also writes about Malcolm Cowley wrote in Exile's Return "The Wasteland" was "socially divisive to its time". Cowley said the poem was stating that the past was dignified and the present was barren of emotion (133). Most critics do not agree with this argument, so many people tend to pay attention to other critics who saw hope in the future coming about. Eliot might be saying that the past was dignified and the present is barren, but he is also saying it does not need to stay that way. He perhaps means that the healing process has begun, and things will go back to the dignified past, once the winter is gone, and the pain is dealt with. The memory and desire are mixing "Stirring dull roots with spring rain". The lines "stirring dull roots with spring rain" (Eliot 2357) is once again another image of the healing process as roots grow deeper in the spring rain.

They must break through the hard ground in order to grow, but the rain softens the ground and nourishes the plants helping them grow. Not only are these references to growth and life about recovering after the war, but Gregory Jay also believes it is referring to Eliot's own personal life. He writes that Eliot had come to a standstill in his writing career at this point. He was having a hard time thinking of things to write about and was afraid that he would never have another good idea again. He alludes to this in some of his own writings, so there is a death that has occurred in his brain when it comes to ideas (Jay 133). The "death" does not last long, and though perhaps painful Eliot thinks of new ideas, and this new creation he has made is the beginning of a new season. April represents the awakening of ideas and passions he was holding inside as the past he held was blocking his ability to write new works. The reference to "Dull roots" in this case can mean that his ancestry was dull. The winter and forgetful snow was a "secure oblivion that seduces and comforts those who do not presume to begin writing again" (Jay 133). Gregory Jay was saying that Eliot was in a state of fear that he might never be able to get out of because it felt comfortable to him. Eliot explains in these lines that he overcame his fear of having nothing to write about by merely writing.

Then it can be possibly stated that because of the fear that he would never write again, he was able to force himself to write this poem (Jay 133). There are many different interpretations and possibilities as to why Eliot wrote about April being a cruel month. Most of them make sense, and are correct in their own way. He apparently wrote the poem quite rapidly. Martin mentions in an essay that no one really knows what the poem is about and that no one probably ever will be able to determine it (153). His collection of essays therefore gives different interpretations as every critic does. Martin explains how the poem was originally received, in a variety of ways. Some people thought it was puzzling, some a hoax, and one person said Eliot just did not know how to write poetry (Martin 138). These sometimes conflicting interpretations are dealt with as the entirety of the poem is studied by critics. Continuing on with the next couple lines of the poem Eliot left more images about the seasons to be understood. He had mentioned winter and spring, but he went on to talk about summer. He never concludes with autumn, however, but just continues with the story the poem tells ending with summer. "Summer surprised us…with a shower of rain" implies things are still not always perfect, but the life is there making things easier. "And went on in sunlight" (Eliot 2357) shows that despite the rain life continues after the rain and there is sunlight again. Summer is the result of the pain and healing process that spring takes people through. Eliot is suggesting in his poem that the world can overcome difficulties and barrenness.

Through a healing process that may hurt life can be restored once again to the world. The world after the war went through years and years of healing. It was never completely restored before there was another World War that left the land devastated once again. The cruelness occurred for a long time, but after the Second World War lilacs blossomed out of the dead land. It was a very long healing process, longer than Eliot probably imagined, but it was necessary. In the end seasons of summer came. The world has not seen another major war since then which suggests that summer has arrived again. Eliot did not know all this was going to happen, of course, but he was giving people a type of hope in the midst of the fragments and wasteland left behind after the war. He had no idea the healing process would take long, but he had struggled with a similar situation in his own life. His writing had come to a desolate lonely place, but he began again and brought the world "The Wasteland". Just by writing his poem he was proving that after the cruel process of getting things to grow out of dead land the results can be glorious. Lilacs and other plants that must grow in desolate lands become hearty after breaking through the ground. Plants bear the wind and weather in order to blossom and live. The opening of "The Wasteland" is now quite different from the original "Boston night-town scene" he originally planned (Jay 133). It is understandable why a poem entitled "The Wasteland" would begin with a depiction of a desolate land, or a place in need of a thaw.

The winter Eliot begins with makes the reader think of a barren wasteland where everything is dead. This modern sense of despair is there and continues even through the healing process. The thawing of winter into spring and the growth of the lilacs shows that the land is not going to be bare anymore. There is a growing and replanting that is happening throughout the dead land. The land so badly in need of life is now developing slowly and cruelly into the long desired summertime where life is abundant. "The Wasteland" has been interpreted by a great assortment of literary critics with an array of differing opinions. The opening lines of the poem are clearly about new beginnings whether they are beginnings after a war, in Eliot's career, or in nature. Eliot is saying that in order for the new life generally associated with summer the pain that comes with April and spring must be dealt with after winter. Though it is not necessarily a "celebration of life" like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it is not quite the "ode of dejection" Jay also refers to it as. Rather it is perhaps an ode of rejuvenation, a bringing about of life through a cruel process after a lifeless time. Bibliography Bloom, Harold. T.S. Eliot : Comprehensive Research and Study Guide. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House, 1999. Brooker, Jewel Spears. Reading the Wasteland; Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation.

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