Pessimism in "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot

When we talked about the twenty-first century, we might directly think about T.S. Eliot and his famous poem called "The Waste Land". T.S Eliot became the most important literary figure in around 20th century and also a modernist poet. He wrote The Waste Land in 1922. Differed from Housman's poem, he describes optimism from the past while T.S Eliot represents pessimism. That pessimism feeling that many of twenty century poets had wasn't because self-pity, but it was all pure from intellectual and more impersonal. T.S Eliot regarded as a poet who writes about loneliness, boredom, and emptiness in around 20th century. He began to predict about more issues about pessimism after the First World War. He frustrated himself and pessimist about the future lives that people would had later. The poem consist some symbols; water, music and singing, and the fisher king. Those portrays some meaning--water symbolized both life and death. He tried to explain to reader that water can both harm and bring some luck as well. Water can both help for restoring life, but also lead into drowning and death, like what the character name Phlebas the sailor from The Waste Land. The other symbols, which are the fisher king and music and singing, also represent thoughtful meaning. The fisher king is actually the central character in The Waste Land. He represents Jesus Christ as a fish. Whereas, Eliot explains the Fisher King as a symbolic of humanity, as if it's connected to the meaningless of urban existence. On the other hand, Eliot is an ordinary modernist poet, so like the other modernist poet, he was interested in the divide between high and low culture then symbolized it by using music. Eliot believes that opera, drama and art were in decline while popular culture was on the rise.

In the poem, which is The Waste Land, Eliot shows his conviction about people that lived in modern world was actually cannot fully live. He began to say that people who lived in modern world are spiritually dead. Eliot tried to tell readers about how fragile human psychological state in twentieth century. He believes that twentieth century began to destroy yet somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful.  He also adds some details; like "human will only experience to work in their life." Eliot uses techniques like pastiche and juxtaposition to make his points without having to argue them explicitly. From the poem, we can see that the writer wrote in every different section apart. From the first section, we can see that it is called Anglican Burial Service and explain with different speaker. This section mostly can be seen as a modified dramatic monologue. He wrote so many section and explain step-by-step about how the waste land and the problems--troubled religious proposition, transformation, and at the end of the first section, Eliot established waste land as the modern city with some fictional name and described it as desolate, depopulated and inhabited only by ghosts from the past.

We can see that Eliot felt that Western culture was headed to hell in a hand basket, and people were getting dumber and dumber as the time went by.  The whole reason why he wrote this poem is because modern people do not care anything, even an art or spirituality. He assumed that people getting dumbed down by atheism, booze, and also laziness. Overall, The Waste Land is about psychological and cultural crisis which came with the loss of moral identity right after World War I. Pessimist issue become more visible as more people tried to analyze this poem. Eliot attitude through the poem explain enough pessimism in modern era.  Eliot supports his poem with combining images from pagan rituals and religious texts with ancient fertility rituals and allusions to legends of the Grail. These images of ceremony and tradition are set against bleak images of modern life.

In the end, Eliot does write a serious and complex poem to be understood. His imagery through future urban life already pessimist by looking at people's attitude, which are most of them become atheist and general laziness that already conquer them.

References:

SPARKNOTES, TS Eliot Poem Analysis, The Waste Land. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/analysis.html.

POETRY FOUNDATION, The Waste Land by T.S Eliot. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176735.

E-Notes. Study Guide, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot Poem Analysis. http://www.enotes.com/topics/waste-land.

T.S Eliot. http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/t-s-eliot.

SHMOOP, The Waste Land Analysis. http://www.shmoop.com/the-waste-land/poem-text.html.