The Structure of The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot's place in the history of English poetry is secured chiefly on the basis that he has evolved a new poetic technique. He emerged on the literary scene of Europe with an extraordinary sensitiveness to modern conditions and equipped with a rare power of analysis and dissection learnt from the progress in the study of the psychological method.

His approach to poetry was new and revolutionary. The mythical technique is the most striking aspect of the poem “The Waste Land.” The mythical method consists in seeking analogies for the present in the past. The mythical method had certain advantages: 

1. It provides a pattern, a way of controlling and ordering and giving shape to what is shapeless and chaotic

2. It provides a norm for measuring the extent of degeneracy in contemporary Europe.

3. It shows that the present spiritual predicament is an ever-recurring phenomenon.

4. It emphasises the wide gulf which separates the present godless humanity from the early human society when spiritual values were intact

5. In this way, the poet is able to compress whole ages within a short span and the poem gains in comprehensiveness, and

6. as the myths from tradition are well-known, the use of the mythical method aids the poet in communicating his meaning.

The technique of symbolism is linked with the use of myths. Eliot's symbols are predominantly traditionally drawn from the literature and mythologies of the past. Moreover, the same symbols are frequently repeated and to clarify their suggestive significance. 

Eliot's uses of allusion, adaptation and quotation, serve a double purpose; it is an aspect of tradition as well as of the process of transformation. His uses of quotations from a large number of European writers give profundity and intensity to his poetry. The more modern and personal aspects of his poetry are synthesised with echoes of dead writers, and out of this unconventional combination arises the innovative form of “The Waste Land.”

Eliot uses the technique of ironic contrast to emphasise the difference between the parallel situations in the present and the past. In the past, fairies walked on the banks of river Thames; today prostitutes and call-girls wander on the bank in search of sex. The fairies washed their feet in the river water. But now-a-days Mrs. Porter (wife of Mr Porter) and her daughter wash their feet in soda-water.

Through the stream-of-consciousness technique, Tiresias reflects on the events of the past and the present and sees a lot of resemblance between them. He is the unifying symbol and the substance of the poem is made up of what he sees and hears.

In the poem, T.S. Eliot has used the technique of the cinematograph. Just as in a cinema-film, so in the poem, there are a series of shots transcending time and place, meaningless if considered separately, but taken together form a coherent whole.

All the technical devices used by Eliot contribute to a circular shape. The cyclical pattern of the poem is derived from the vegetation and Grail myths.

At the conclusion of the poem, we have the feeling that this ending is more like a new beginning because the words of the Thunder are not final, but just an indication of a possibility.