Question- Eliot's "The Waste Land' is an expression of the disillusionment of a Generation.'

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Analyse how The Waste Land' presents the disillusion of the post war generation in Europe?
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He (Eliot) has done none than any other living English. Poet to make this age conscious of itself, and, in being. Conscious apprehensive. Explain write reference to the waste land.
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"The Waste Land is essentially the expression of a negative impulse" Do you agree with this assessment of 'The Waste Land'? Give a reasoned answer.
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The first section of 'The Waste Land...........view?

Answer -

The Waste Land expresses 'the disillusionment of a generation' the post-war generation in Europe, and that it merely presents "a vision of desolation and spiritual draught." Others have said that the poem is merely a, "diagnosis of the spiritual distemper of the age", it offers no solution and that its message is one of despair and pessimism.

The theme of the poem is the spiritual and emotional sterility of the modern world. According to Cleanth Brook its theme is life-in-death, the living death of the Modern Waste Landers. Man has lost his passion, i.e. his faith in God and religion-his passional participation in religion-and this decay of faith has resulted in the loss of vitality, both spiritual and emotional. Consequently, the life in the modern Waste Land is a life-in-death, a living death, like that of the Sibyl at Cumae. According to Eliot's philosophy, in so far as we are human beings we must act and do either evil on good, and it is better to do evil than to do nothing. Modern man has lost his sense of good and evil, and this keeps him from being alive, from acting. In the modern desolate land the people are dead; they merely exist like dead things. As Stephen Spenser has pointed out, they are to be compared to such dead things as a stick, a gutter, a pipe. At the most, theirs is a life-in-death, a life of complete inactivity, listlessness and apathy. That is why winter is welcome to them, and April is the cruelest of months, for it reminds them of the stirrings of life and, "they dislike to be roused from their death-in-like."

The Waste Land reflects contemporary spirit in its totality. Its anxiety, its despair, its neurosis, its boredom and mental ability have all been brought out. In the contemporary waste land there is corruption and sexual degeneration at all levels.

Sex-relationship in the middle classes is equally mechanical. This is seen in the mechanical relationship of the typist and the clerk. The Typist gives herself to the clerk with absense of total indifference and apathy. There is neither repulsion nor any pleasure, and this asbence of feeling is a measure of the sterility of the age. It is just animal-like copulation. As soon the youngman has departed, the typist re-arranges her hair, and puts a record on the gramophone, "with automatic hands." The perversion of sex is also to be seen in the lower classes of society. The songs of three Thames daughters clearly show that they have been sexually exploited, but they can do nothing about it. They and their people are too poor and too apathetic to make any efforts for the betterment of their lot. Man has grown inhuman; and has lost its humanity. Such perversion of sex results in neurosis, boredom, ennui, frustration and disillusionment, despair and hopelessness of the modern man. This is symbolised by the crowds flowing over London bridge, listless and apathetic with their eyes cast down. All this is faithfully mirrored in The Waste Land, and in this respect the poem may be called as a social document.

However, it would be wrong to say that The Waste Land merely depicts the disillusionment of the post-war generation, and that it is a mere diagnosis of the distemper of the modern age, without any solution, or hope of salvation. It, no doubt, deals with the tragedy of the modern age, but it also shows that tragedy is at the heart of life, all life, in all ages. The past and the present are telescoped and it is thus shown that what is happening in the present age did also happen in the past. Sexual sins, perversion of sex, have always led to degeneration and decay. The sexual sins of the King Fisher and his soldiers laid waste his kingdom; and ancient. Thebes was laid waste because its king was guilty of the sin of incest. Sexual violence has always been there Philomela was raped and her tongue was severed so that she may not reveal the crime. Reference to Elizabeth and Leicester in the song of the daughters of the Thames shows that sex-relationship in the past also has been equally futile and meaningless. In all these respects, the present resembles the past.

The poem does not merely reflects, the disillusionment of a generation', it goes much deeper. To quote Bullough, "it goes beyond a mere diagnosis of the spiritual distemper of the age", it also makes a promise and a prophecy. The picture of the contemporary Waste Land which it presents might be bleak and gloomy, but it does not end on a note of despair. It suggests that regeneration is possible, as it has always been possible, through suffering and penance. Man has sinned and he must alone to God for his sins through suffering. In the last section of the poem, the thunder is already heard and the clouds are there. Thus a promise is held out of the coming of the rain of divine grace, only if man will repent and do penance as the King Fisher and the King Oedipus did. Eliot brings together the wisdoms of the East and the West and shows that spiritual regeneration can come, if only we heed the voice of the thunder. Give, sympathise, and control. These fragments the poet has showed to put his own land in order." 

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