The Connell Guide to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

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This is the book I have been looking for.

Every year, in April, I read T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land because I like the line “April is the cruelest month.” However, around the time that I get to Marie sledding with Freddie I find myself confused and lost. I understand that The Waste Land is regularly described as the most important poem of the twentieth century, but I annually fail to see how this confusing stewpot of images and phrases managed to earn that title.

This book provides the background to appreciate the poem. For example, I learned that the point of The Waste Land is its fractured and abrupt change in the voice narrating or constituting the elements of the poem. Thus, the voice talking about April is not the same voice as the voice that talks about sledding down the mountain. As the author, Seamus Perry, points out Eliot's original title was “He do the police in different voices,” which was taken from a comment about her child reading different newspaper stories in different voices. So, I take it that, in a way, Eliot's point was that modernity is fractured and comes at its inhabitants from all angles.

That is an important point for an appreciation of the poem. The problem I had with the poem was the point of the poem. With that in mind, I think I have a better understanding of how to read The Waste Land as constituent units of different voices.

Further, Perry does a wonderful job of providing background information on the poem. I find it interesting that so much background information is required to truly appreciate the poem, which is not to say that the poem cannot be appreciated without that understanding, but the appreciation becomes deeper with more knowledge. For example, while the line about “April is the cruelest month” is nifty, I had not appreciated Eliot's reversal of normal values by describing the land's return to life in a negative way.

Perry provides substantial insights about other passages in the poem, which insights are invaluable.

For myself, I think I picked up one by my recent reading of [[ASIN:B004IYJEB0 Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization]]. In that book, I reflected on the description of Rome's imposition of a “Carthaginian Peace” on its former rival, which virtually guaranteed the next round of war. Eliot makes several references to Carthage in his poem, which makes me wonder if Eliot wasn't channeling the thinking - the guilt - that Germany had been subjected to a Carthaginian Peace and that Europe would see future wars as a result.

Is my interpretation correct? I don't know, but part of a great work of art is that it is open to interpretation and re-interpretation.

If you are struggling with The Waste Land, then this is a book that will interest you.