The Waste Land Themes

For Eliot, one of the single greatest causes of Western civilization becoming "The Waste Land" is the fact that religion doesn't really have the influence it once did. In the old days, people didn'...

There's just no getting away from the past in "The Waste Land," but Eliot's biggest criticism of modern society is that it has gotten too far away from the past. Throughout this poem, you encounter...

Question: "Hey Eliot, what's so wrong with the modern world?" Eliot's answer: "Everyone is way too selfish." Question: "So what?" Eliot's answer: "Well, haven't you ever wondered why you're so lone...

Simply put, there are some pretty unattractive characters walking around "The Waste Land." The worst of all might be the two-thousand-year-old Tiresias, with his "wrinkled dugs" (228); but the pimp...

In "The Waste Land," the status of sex is pretty much a measuring stick for how morally demolished society is. On several occasions, when it comes time for Eliot to show how truly low we've all fal...