More on Eliot...

“Journey of the Magi” is quite different from anything we have read from Eliot this far. I found it interesting that he describes the journey of the three wise men as being painful. I don’t believe that the biblical version mentions the conditions of their journey. It makes sense that the conditions would have been pretty brutal in “The very dead of winter.” The narrator seems to be alienated and sad which is common in Eliot’s poems. The Wasteland and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” have similar narrators who have been alienated from the rest of the world.

I was very interested in Eliot’s relationship with his wife and how it impacted his life. The movie that we watched in class portrayed his wife as being mentally ill. The medications that she was prescribed seemed to a dangerous combination. I wonder if she really needed all those medications? It looked as if the meds were only making her condition worse. The way Eliot was portrayed in the video is exactly how I imagined him. He kept to himself and showed little emotion. He seemed to care very much for his wife, but he didn’t know how to respond to her ill actions. His behavior and lack of communication is hard to understand which explains why his poetry is difficult to interpret.