When TS Eliot wrote The Waste Land in 1922 he was a self-proclaimed atheist. About six years later, he described himself as an adherent of Anglo-Catholic Christianity and so wrote the Four Quartets. As one might postulate, some scholars believe that there is an innate Christianity in The Waste Land and have therefore attempted to speculate and interpret the text in that style. However, to do so would require taking two dramatic steps. First, Christian poetry must be defined as a genre, and second, poetry must actually be interpreted according to the first principle of genre definition. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay There has always been an undercurrent of Christian ethics in Western literary interpretation. Since Christianity has dominated much of Anglo-Saxon culture, the assumption of a Christian background in the audience must intrinsically exist in any interpretation of Western literature. When applying this concept to the genre, in particular here to Christian poetry, it is plausible to hypothesize that atheist poetry is in its sense “Christian” in that it is a response to a first principle, namely that of the Christian background. An illustrative analogy: Aristotle wrote his philosophical treatises as a response to Platonism. Taking Plato's principles as initial presuppositions, Aristotle advocated a different kind of philosophical worldview contrary to Plato's theses; however, he still remained trapped against the backdrop of the ubiquity of the Platonic assumption in defining his own philosophy. “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato,” said the British philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (“Alfred North Whitehead”). This same parallel can be applied when defining Christian poetry in the Western literary tradition. That is, the ubiquity of Christianity in Western culture presupposes that any kind of attack against it in itself (to steal an Aristotelian term) is inherently Christian since the nature of Christianity is a given type in the culture. Therefore, this allowance grants critics the ability to interpret The Waste Land as a form of Christian poetry. Because The Waste Land is an immensely complex work, any singularly focused interpretation does not do justice to the work as a whole. So, “The Burial of the Dead,” which seems to have one of the most prominent anti-Christian sentiments, will be the sole focus of this interpretation. Eliot alludes to a virtual litany of biblical passages and other canonical works in this section of the piece. However, when viewed in light of the modernist theme of dissatisfaction with the Western world, which Eliot argues not only belittles religion but also sexuality and materialism, The Waste Land does not lend itself to being seen as a piece of pro-Western literature. Christian. (especially in the Protestant sense of Weber's work ethic). On the contrary, his allusions tend to taint the sacredness of a religion so widely supported in the West. Through carefully and skillfully crafted authorial commentary and the use of an extended metaphor (that of vegetation), Eliot manages to create a work that can be read as anti-Christian literature, which would still classify it as Christian in the sense described above. .“April is the cruelest month…” thus begins “The Burial of the Dead” (line 1 of Eliot), alluding to the general Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which the pilgrims begin their journey in April, the time of “ sweet showers…[which] generate in it andthey generate the flowers” ​​(Chaucer lines 3-4). Compare this to Eliot's vision of April, “…raising/lilacs from the dead earth…” and “…mixing/dull roots with spring rain…” and it becomes painfully obvious that this April pilgrimage to Eliot is not the happiest of times (Eliot lines 2,4). This new pilgrimage to which Eliot alludes can be seen in satirical opposition to Chaucer's search for religious comfort in a pilgrimage for religious duty. The second stanza introduces Eliot's authorial voice and some intense religious commentary and biblical allusions. What roots cling, what branches grow from this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot tell or guess, for you know only 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. Only there is shadow under this red rock, (Enter the shadow of this red rock), and I will show you something different both from your shadow that walks behind you in the morning, and from your shadow that comes towards you in the evening; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (Eliot lines 19-30) The first step in entering this complex passage is to identify the multiple allusions. Then, once you have established the source material, you can analyze the cohesion of the passage and see how the allusions fit together to form an overall meaning. The root and branch metaphor has two possible origins, both applicable to the figure of Christ. “I am the true vine and my Father the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit” (Holy Bible, John 15:1-2). This passage offers a possible origin of the metaphor while the parable of the sower which tells of seeds scattered across different types of soil, some taking root and some not, explains the stony, rubbish image used by Eliot (Holy Bible, Luke 8:5 -15). Thus we have a synthesis of the biblical allusions used to set up the rest of the satire of the piece. Eliot then directly addresses the “Son of Man,” a common title given to Christ in the New Testament, and accuses him of being unable to answer the question. The flow of “broken images” lends itself to being interpreted as a transition to the broken images that Eliot subsequently presents. The crickets without relief, the red rock that casts a shadow and the rock without water are once again summarized biblical allusions referring to Christ. In Ecclesiastes chapter 12, the author speaks of a time when the grasshopper (cricket) crawled on the ground and desire was no longer evident in people; the chapter as a whole seems to describe the modernist mentality in which “…Everything is meaningless” (Holy Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:5,8). The shadow of the red rock is taken from a passage in Isaiah chapter 32, which tells of the coming of a Kingdom of Justice where men will be like "shadows of great rocks in thirsty lands" and "streams of water in the wilderness" (Holy Bible, Isaiah 32:2). Finally the water from the dry stone image comes from Exodus where Moses is told to strike a rock and water will come out for the people to drink (Holy Bible, Exodus 17:6). Eliot then asks the Son of Man to come under this shadow created by the rock and uses a non-biblical allusion, a metaphor for aging first seen in the riddle of the Sphinx of Greek mythology since morning, afternoon and evening are the equivalent of young, middle-aged. aged and old (Loy). Once again Eliot directly addresses the Son of Man using the second person possessive pronoun “Thine” referring to the shadow of Christ in the morning and in the evening (i.e. the birth of Christianity and the Christianity of Eliot's time). This setting leads to Eliot's oft-quoted line, "I will show you fear in onehandful of dust", where dust is a metaphor commonly used to imply worthlessness and decay (Eliot's line 30). Having now the origins of the allusions and interpretations of the metaphors, one can further explain the structure of these in the passage and derive a sort of coherent meaning in the juxtaposition of such phrases. Eliot opens his second stanza with a rhetorical question, asking about the roots and branches, obvious biblical allusions. Then addressing the man's son directly and accusing him of not being able to account for these lost roots stony rubbish, Eliot creates a denigration of the authority of the Christ figure in the modernist world by stating that there is no water coming (as was promised by God in Exodus) from the dry rocks and that crickets offer no comfort. , Eliot further highlights the empty promises of religion so often felt in his post-war social landscape by concluding his stanza by asking the Son of Man to come to the shadow of this rock and promising to show him something other than his "shadow" ( religion) in different periods of Christian history, Eliot manages to eloquently mock Christianity as absolutely useless and dead. stating that it is a handful of dust, useless and yet which strikes fear into many inconsiderate peoples. After a satire on the concept of love, Eliot turns again to the authorial commentary that introduces Madame Sosostris as the technology to propagate his anti-Christian sentiment. The cards themselves carry a strong connotation of Christian references. The Phoenician sailor with pearls that were his eyes (Eliot's lines 47-48), the one-eyed merchant with something white on his back (Eliot's lines 52-53), the man with three sticks, the lack of 'Hanged Man (Eliot's lines 51, 54-55), all of which can be interpreted as alluding to some Christian ideal. The Phoenician Mariner, or Fisher King, echoes a biblical passage from Matthew chapter four where Jesus asks Simon and Peter, the two brothers, to come and be “fishers of men” (Holy Bible, Matthew 4:18-19) . It is necessary to make an interjection here to clarify how Christ fits into the title of Fisher King given to him by Eliot. By asking Simon and Peter to help him in his ministry, Christ implies that he too is a fisher of men, which explains the “fisherman” part of the Fisher King. The part of the King comes from the title given to Christ at the time of his crucifixion, “King of the Jews”. Furthering the Christian implications, Eliot makes the parenthetical comment that, "Those were pearls that were his eyes...", alluding to the parable of the Pearl of Great Price. Found in the Book of Matthew, this account equates the value of the kingdom of heaven to that of a pearl found by a merchant. The merchant saves all his money and buys the pearl, which makes him richer than before (Holy Bible, Matthew 13:45-46). Here, using the past tense verb “were”, the pearls are indicated as being in a state of lost value. Thus, the kingdom of heaven spoken of in the parable no longer exists, at least in Eliot's mind according to this passage of the poem. The one-eyed merchant carries something on his back, conjuring images of the cross or cross carried by a servant. for Christ at his crucifixion. Eliot calls this something empty, something that the speaker is forbidden to see, ergo it is something that is not there which furthers the credibility of the interpretation in favor of the charters as significant ideals of Christianity in its time period, i.e. the lack of religion. This is complementary to the man with three sticks. The staffs, which are associated with the shepherd (yet another term for Christ), being mentioned in threes, also lend themselves to a reminder of the holy trinity of Christianity. Even in this case it is one>