Eliot's "The Waste Land" is arguably the best work he ever created. However, this brilliant work is also one of the most difficult to comprehend. Scholars have been studying this particular piece for years and yet no one can definitely say they know what it means in its entirety.
The title itself could have various meanings. It could refer to the modern city, the state of the world, the darkness of human capability, the collapse of civilization and progress, or simply the idea of regeneration. The poem also has some recurrent themes such as death and rebirth which appears in lines 1-4 in the first part of the poem, "The Burial of the Dead." This death and rebirth theme can be shown in many ways: someone needs to restore our lives back to health, morality is dead, and religious meaning is dead.
Throughout the "The Waste Land," there is no coherent narrative. Eliot tries to show us this poem instead of telling us the poem. It's made up of numerous fragmented parts; each contributes to a larger meaning. I argue that Eliot wanted to break up the poem into sections because each of them are complex. By breaking them up into parts the reader is able to see the situation more clearly. As people, we try to smooth out the difficulties in life when it's too complicated. This is exactly what I believe he was going for. Every person is the same person and every journey is the same journey.
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