A Classic Appearance (Waste Land sections 1 and 2)

After rereading the first two sections of The Waste Land again, I realized that my previous interpretations of the text still stood firmly; however, I found other interpretations which I had not grasped before.

In the first section, “The Burial of the Dead”, I found it rather interesting how Elliot mentions through Marie the complete opposites of what every human being thinks of the seasons.

APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in a forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. (Elliot, line 7).

How can you breed flowers form a dead land? How can winter and snow keep us warm? These sudden contrasts confused me. In my opinion, Elliot suggests that April, where summer and blooming is at its climax, is when you visit the dead and leave on their graves flowers. This action is why April is the cruelest month, because you again recall the memories you had with the dead, and you desire that they will live again like flowers do after winter. Then, the speaker, Marie, talks about winter being the season that kept you warm. This is because no flower is around to remind your deceased loved ones.

I also questioned myself about the “Unreal City”, that Elliot mentions in the last stanza of the first section. Why is the unreal city in London? I thought it might be due to the bloody wars in which London has participated in; however, if it were for the wars, wouldn’t Germany, France, Russia, etc. be also locations for unreal cities?

Then, a singular verse clicked in my mind Dante’s Inferno, “I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring…” (Elliot, line 56). This image of people walking around in a ring is just like the punishment that the Avaricious and the Prodigal received in the Fourth Circle of hell. In this circle, the doomed had to push the waits that they had spent or saved and pushed them around in circles.

Then, in section two, “The Chess Game”, I realized something about a word “tonight” that was spelled “to-night”, “My nerves are bad to-night.” (Elliot, line 111). The word to-night made me think that Elliot might have wanted to say that this wasn’t the only time the rich girl went crazy, that she had felt this way in other occasions. I interpreted as “My nerves are bad too tonight”, but in order for the sound and rhythm of the poem to be right, Elliot made this enjambment.