fferent verses:I. The Burial of the DeadII. A Game of ChessIII. The Fire SermonIV. Death by WaterV. What the Thunder SaidEliot’s desolation of “The Waste Land” suggests severe spiritual unrest. The emptiness in the images in the poem could possibly relate to emptiness in his life, like the fact that he may be missing something. The journey through the empty desert in search of water, and life, could be similar to journeying through life, looking for answers, and a meaning.The search for meaning is, for Eliot, a kind of spiritual unrest. The meaning of life that he seeks is possibly a renewal of life. Certain parts of the poem deal with death without ‘rebirth.’ Death is a final end, but an unsatisfactory one for Eliot, yet any chance of renewal is done away with. He sees the renewal of life to be doomed from the beginning, because in the end, it will die anyway.Through The Criterion, a journal that Eliot founded in 1922, and through his essays and volumes of literary criticism, he became a great influence. Some of Eliot’s essays disappointed his admirers, especially when he expressed a liking for a society that was organized around the Christian Church and ‘suggested that such a society could afford only a limited number of "free-thinking Jews.’(Literature)Religious themes became increasingly important to his poetry as well. From “Journey of the Magi,” “Ash Wednesday,” “Murder In The Cathedral,”(which was based on the death of St. Thomas Beckett), and other lyrics published in a series of pamphlets. Others included “The Family Reunion,” and “The Cocktail Party,” which became a popular success right away.His last major work of non-dramatic poetry was “Four Quartets.” This collection was a gathering of one volume of four previously published long poems. It talked about issues of time, and spiritual renewals. To...
