Waste Land in class (the most important poem of the 20th century)

Complete structure (all five parts as a whole)
It's greatness lies in it's ability to connect with us all, as in Prufrock and Eliot's other early poetry.

Traveling through a series of images (sorta like Dante?) Go home and listen to Eliot read it and check out the power point.
----The tarot prediction in the first section is explicated throughout the rest of the poem; the next four parts explain/live out the prediction in the Burial of the Dead.

Luke Skywalker is the Hanged Man! In Episode 2 when he loses his hand and falls off the antenna upside down. Upside-down means it will be resurrected and reversed.




This is the most helpful hypertext I could find:
http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/table/explore5.html

Burial of the dead
What's wrong with the world, how the earth is now a waste land
Begins the same as Chaucer--in April, so he's well-read/well-versed in literature


Game of Chess
Failures of married love/life the game isn't being played right; the strategies are wrong; how to make life worth living again through love and marriage

Fire Sermon
Failure of lust (unstructured love); awkward love/sex relationships; sexuality and desire (stirred by spring rain?); practicing 'free love' in a philosophical way, of course;


Death by water
low point; sparagmos;


Thunder said
Eliot's last attempt to make sense of the world before converting to Christianity; water cures the waste land since it's dry and rocky;

Blog the themes I identified in parts of Burial, sections 2, 3 and 5 (I'm a 5!)

"Full Fathom Five..."

(From "The Tempest")

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.