Critical Analysis of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: Tiresias' Role

This essay provides a critical analysis of T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land,' focusing on the character Tiresias and the poem's third section, 'The Fire Sermon.' It explores Eliot's use of juxtaposition, symbols of death and resurrection, and religious metaphors to portray the self-denial of humanity and the post-World War I sterility of society. The essay examines how Tiresias, a mythological figure who has lived as both a man and a woman, serves as a lens through which Eliot critiques the degrading moral values and the hollowness of modern life, highlighting themes of futility, barrenness, and the mechanical nature of human relationships. The analysis also touches upon Eliot's literary techniques, such as allusions, imageries, and irony, to create a realistic audio-visual effect and underscore the poem's motifs.

Running head: ENGLISH LITERATURE
English Literature
The Name of the Student:
The Name of the University:
Author Note:

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The extracted lines are from the third section of the modern poem The Waste Land by
T S Eliot. In the third section, The Fire Storm, Eliot uses various forms of juxtaposition to
portray the self-denial nature of humans with the help of symbols of death and resurrection.
The essay will critically analyse the chosen part with the explanation of the character
Tiresias.
The poet uses the story of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King in his poem to depict the
post-world war sterility of the society (Araujo 2015). It talks about how the futility of war
arises crisis in both social and psychological level. The suggestion of impotence, that the title
The Waste Land suggests, is represented in the pointless journey to search for the Holy Grail
and the barrenness of the Fisher King. Despite all these, the religious metaphors (Sharma
2015) along with the last line of the poem points toward peace and a new dawn (Neimneh
2013). After the allusions of death and infertility in the first section and the juxtaposition of
upper class and lower class society to invoke sexuality in the theme of worthlessness of life in
the second section, the poet sets out to present the blind, emptiness the violent nature of
relationships through a mythological character, Tiresias and the river Thames. The opening
scene puts Tiresias at the bank of the river Thames lamenting for it as the joyous summer
days are gone and now it is filled with litter. He recalls scenes after scenes that had made him
feel the barrenness of relationships based on lust and the degrading moral values of modern
society. The mechanical life of the typist is another evidence of that hollowness in human life
in modern days. After the completion of her work like a human machine, she returns home
only to indulge herself in the monotonous household tasks. She is waiting for her lover to
come with whom she will go through the act of artificial love. The typist and her lover, both
are meant to be the archetypal characters (Nandi 2016) of the contemporary time.
Eliot’s The Waste Land is a poem with various fragments taken from other literary
works, which creates a wide range of allusions and imageries. In order to create a realistic

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audio-visual effect, he transforms the sounds into words and deploys imageries like violet
hour and human engine (Eliot et al. 2014). The metaphorical use of the word taxi signifies the
mechanical life of the contemporary people (Mugloo 2015). Eliot’s use of irony is also
present where he makes the blind Tiresias see the young typist’s activities.
The character of Tiresias is taken from the Greek mythological stories where he is a
distinguished prophet. He was cursed to live a woman’s life for seven years and later, as a
punishment, was turned blind. Eliot uses this mythological character to highlight the theme of
this poem – the degrading moralities of the society (Straková 2016). Through this character,
Eliot has displayed a range of episodes to build up his point. The character of Tiresias has
juxtaposition on himself as he has lived both the lives of a man and a woman and also a blind
seer. This juxtaposition of the character has been deployed to build a bridge between man and
woman; ancient and modern in the poem. The contrast in the character helps to underline the
decaying moral values of the people in modern era (Rao 2016). The purpose that Tiresias
serves in this poem is to act as a device of establishing the motif of the poem.
T S Eliot’s The Waste Land is an important mark on the history of modern poetry.
The excerption is taken from the third section of the poem which is narrated by the most
significant persona in the poem, Tiresias. In the selected lines, poet exhibits how life has
become futile after the First World War through the eyes of Tiresias. The brilliance of Eliot is
evident in the portraying of character and the engagement of literary styles.

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Reference List
Araujo, M.M., 2015. The Chambers of the Sea" and a" Knock Upon the Door": Questioning
Meaning in TS Eliot’s" The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and" The Waste Land.
Undergraduate Review, 11(1), pp.26-30.
Eliot, T.S., Spears Brooker, J. and Schuchard, R., 2014. The Complete Prose of TS Eliot: The
Critical Edition: Apprentice Years, 1905–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press and
Faber & Faber Ltd.
Mugloo, A., A study of the metaphor of cultural disintegration in ts eliot’s the wasteland.
Nandi, R., 2016. Archetypal Approach to Eliot's “The Waste Land”. An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Literary Studies Online–Open Access–Peer reviewed http://postscriptum. co.
in/Volume I (January 2016), p.57.
Neimneh, S., 2013. The Anti-Hero in Modernist Fiction: From Irony to Cultural Renewal.
Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 46(4), pp.75-90.
Rao, B.M., Themes, images, motifs, myths and symbols in ts eliots the waste land: a study.
Sharma, C., Existential Approach in the Works of James Joyce, TS Eliot and Samuel Beckett.
Straková, K., 2016. Mythical Method in TS Eliot's" The Waste Land".