Explanation: April is the cruellest month

These lines have been extracted from the first section The Burial of the Dead of the poem ‘The Waste Land’ composed by T. S. Eliot.

Here Eliot presents an ironic contrast. The attitude expressed towards the spring and the winter in the opening lines of ‘The Burial of the Dead’ is the reverse of the normal attitude. The Burial of the Dead means spiritual decadence and death of the waste-landers. Winter in western countries is unwelcome while spring is most welcome everywhere. Nature remains dead and cold during the winter season, but the dead and cold nature is revived and brought back to life by the spring rain.

But in these lines, April is regarded as the cruellest month. The waste landers are spiritually dead. They are content with that state of spiritual death and would not like a spiritual re-awakening. So the waste landers regard April as the cruellest month because the new sweet-showers offer no gladly welcome to the spring. Out of the dead land, lilacs spring, they mix the memories of things gone and desires for things that are to be.

These lines show that waste-landers like to remain dead and inactive. They do not want to get a new life. They like death better than rebirth because rebirth will stir up the spiritual side of the mind and make them desire their blissful seat in heaven.