Part I The Burial of the Dead
by Fatima
Stanza I (Lines 1-18)
This poem starts off describing the month of April. The speaker is telling us that
"April is the cruelest month, breeding- Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing".
April symbolizes a stage of limbo. It is neither living nor dead. The speaker is
retelling the first meeting she had with her lover. "Summer surprised us, coming
over the Starnbergersee- With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,-
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,- And drank coffee, and talked for
an hour." She then said "Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch."
This means I'm not Russian, I'm German. This stanza then ends with her telling
him her childhood stories. "And when we were children, staying at the
archduke's,- My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,- And I was frightened, He
said, Marie." It is here we discover her name is Marie and that she is an
aristocrat. In this stanza, Eliot uses "Lilacs" color to symbolize death and the
image "tuber" (flower bulbs) to indicate the world climate -a stage of inferno,
which is also depicted by the season April. The first stanza of the poem
contains a few romantic and beautiful imagery from the past, which will not
again reappear in the rest of the poem. These past almost pastoral imagery serve
as a sharp contrast to the horrifying images depicted throughout the rest of the
poem-degenerating, destructive, decomposing and debilitating, which in result
creates a very disturbing picture of the wasteland-the world we live in.
Stanza II( Lines 19--42)
The second stanza is told from a soldier's
point of view. This
soldier maybe is Marie's lover. Note in Eliot's poem, speakers changes from
stanza to stanza; from one part to the other. It's very difficult to determine
who the speaker really is because it sounds like all men use one voice and the
man can be someone from the ancient time( Phoenician sailor) or a modern
man (Mr. Eugenides). All women's voices sound similar too-Marie's voice could
also be the typist voice in part III or Queen Elizabeth's voice .
Back to stanza 2. The soldier is passing through
the destroyed city buildings and churches that symbolize the destroyed western
civilization as suggested in the lines, "A heap of broken images, where the
sun beats,- And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,- And the
dry stone no sound of water." Then he says, "Only there is shadow of this red
rock", which indicates the barren and sterile situation of the modern world
assimilating the primitive stage of our civilization-the Stone Age. He continues
with "And I will show you something different from either- your shadow at
morning striding behind you- or your shadow at evening rising to meet you",
which shows his state of loneliness -in his horizon all he can view from morning
to dawn is his shadow following him unblocked by any man-made objects. The land
is a land of death and debris after the war. Any handful dust may contain human
remains which he is fearful to touch, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust".
Again he is telling us how destructive, frightening and catastrophic the war is. Now
while walking he remembers the love ballad that goes "Fresh blows the
wind-to the homeland my Irish-darling where do you linger?" He is very homesick
and wants to return to his love and home. He is just simply tired of the war and
being so lonely. He continues to reminisce his romantic past with his girl and
the garden scene where he had a conversation with her. He says "Your arms
full, and your hair wet, I could not- Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither-
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,- Looking into the heart of light, the
silence.- Desolate and empty the sea." These lines show how confused he was and
also how incapable he was to feel or demonstrate his feeling.
Stanza III (Lines 43-59)
The speaker of this stanza is a soldier's wife. She
has come to Madame Sosostris,a famous clairvoyante, to find out what might have happened to her loved one
in the war. Madame Sosostris showed her cards that implied death, "Here is
...Your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,/(Those are pearls that were his
eyes) indicating he has long been dead. She continues with other cards
that show imminent death, "Belladonna, the Lady of
the Rocks,- The lady of situations. - Here is the man with three staves, and
here the Wheel,- And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,- Which is
blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see, I do
not find- The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.- I see crowds of people, walking
round in a ring." It is obvious that many women came to see Madam Sosostris
to find out about their lovers' fate.
Stanza IV (Lines 60-76)
This stanza starts off by describing London, the "Unreal City". The voice of this stanza could be Marie or any wife of
a soldier. The image is that of the Infernal. "Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,- A
crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,- I had not thought death had undone so
many." The image of the soldiers from the battlefield is horrifying,"
...Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,/And each man fixed his eyes before
his feet", exhausted and confused. She follows the crowd through the city. "Flowed up
the hill and down King William Street,- To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the
hours- With a dead wound on the final stroke of nine." She just passed a church
and heard the death toll. Then she sees a man by the name of Stetson. He says
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!- That corpse you planted last year
in your garden,- Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?- Or has the
sudden frost disturbed its bed?" He was supposed to say flowers but instead
he asks an absurd question," That corpse you planted last year in your garden,-
Has it begun to sprout?" because he was so
used to the term and image of death plus his confused state of mind. These few lines show his insanity
or suffer mentally; they also symbolize death reproduces death. "Oh keep the Dog
far hence, that's friend to men,- Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!-
Hypocrite reader--my double,--my brother!" In these lines, his reference to the
Dog is that all soldiers who died in the battlefield were murdered and their bodies will be
dug up. The last line conveys his hatred for himself and sympathy for his enemies.
In one word, It shows his resentment
towards the war.
الإثنين نوفمبر 17, 2008 11:17 am
