I think we are in rats alley Where the dead explanation

I think we are in rats alley

Where the dead men lost their bones explanation

These lines have been quoted from the second section (A Game of Chess) of the poem The Waste Land written by T. S. Eliot. Here the poet portrays the meanness and sterility of the life of human beings in the modern wasteland.

The first scene of the second section (A Game of Chess) is laid in the drawing-room of a fashionable lady called the Lady of Situations who is an expert in sex intrigues. She is waiting for her lover who arrives after some time. She would like the lover to stay with her and speak to her for some time. But the lover has nothing to speak about.

She asks her lover what is in his mind and what he is thinking about. Then the lover replies to his beloved that human beings are like rats in their holes. They keep running around and thus only disturbing the dead bones lying about.

The "rat's alley" suggests a place where bones are rattled by the rats, a waste alley of death. This is a comment on the spiritual barrenness and the decay of the modern man. His life is an example of the monotony of routine and tired nerves.