Wasteland

Okay first off i had to use an outside source to help me understand this poem, i just didn't want to write well i didn't understand and leave it at that. The first part of this poem is 4 different short stories the first is about a wealthy woman thinking about her childhood. The second story talks about shadows and a hyacinth girl i'm not sure what that was suppose to mean. Third shows us a tarot card reading, the final i thought was the best of the three, the speaker is walking through London and there are ghost all around him he calls out stetson and he asked him if the corpse he planted will sprout.

Game of Chess: what i found was this section was to show stages in seduction, one story showing you the upper class version and the other the lower class. She is sitting on her throne waiting for her lover to arrive, and while she is waiting her thought overcome her. In the lower class version the bar is closing for the night and the woman recounts a conversation with a friend named Lil. Her husband had giving her money for false teeth(line 145) but she didnt buy them so she thinks that he will seek out company of other woman. She blames her bad looks on pills she took (line159)

The First Sermon:
I had to use my outside source for this because i didn't understand it. It was taken from a sermon given by Buddha which he tells people to give up earthly passion( this can be seen on line 250) and seek freedom for earthly things.

Death by Water:
The name says it all Phlebas the Phoenician died by drowning, and he has forgot about his worries ( line 313) I like the part at the end were he says "O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,  320 Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you" i think he is trying to get us to think about our own death.

What the Thunder Said:
again had to rely heavily on the outside source for this section. he talks about people suffering and how cities are being built and destroyed again. Then the holy grail sits atop a chapel and no heroic figure appeared to claim it. Scene shifts to Ganges were they talk about thunder. The poem ends with a series of fragments from Dante, and for Elizabethan drama.


Without Sparknotes this would have been a very hard read. But with sparknotes it seemed to clear up alot of things that i might have had questions on. I cant wait for our class talk about this tomorrow