Ok.. SO. The Waste Land
When I first read this, I had no idea what was going on. There were so many voices and conversations that I couldn't understand the point. I'm not good at reading poetry in this first place so it was quite confusing for me to read this. However, after yesterdays class, I actually understood it better. I liked it, really. To me, my interpretation of the poem is the fall of humanity and all it entails. All the corruptions, the greed, the "wrong-doings", all the negative things are what is going to bring our country to its lowest point. It actually makes me think of the Book of Revelations a bit. Since the Book of Revelations warns what will happen, Eliot's The Waste Land could possibly serve as an example of what is occurring. Just a thought.
I really enjoyed our group activity and it definitely helped me understand the seconds (chosen) better. When my group was doing ours (group 2), it initially made me think of someone who was sitting in a dirty room, going crazy. I'm not sure if anyone has seen the History Channel's special series "America: The Story of Us" over the summer (or recently) but it fits in with the point of Eliot's poem. This poem was written in about the time when cities all around the country were facing deep economic concerns, famine, and death. Each city had it's "slum" area. In NYC, for example as presented by the series, was the Lower East Side. There, people were dumping their waste (including feces) out their window. People were living and dying on the streets, there was prostitution, crime, everything horrible you can think of.
I'm not positive that Eliot wrote this as a reaction to what was going on in America's cities but it definitely fits together. That's my little historical connection with this poem. Can't wait to talk about it more in class tomorrow!
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