T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Wasteland," is a work that makes an exposition of an allegorical world. The Wasteland is an infertile, unforgiving place without love, meaning, purpose, or spirituality. Eliot intended the poem to symbolize the societal problems he saw in Western culture at the dawn of the twentieth century.
However, since the writing of "The Wasteland, much time has passed. With the advancement of our culture and technology, I wonder if it is possible that we may have advanced our values and morals as well. Surely since the twenties we must have made at least some progress in repairing the problems presented in "The Wasteland." The question is: Would T.S. Eliot still think we're living in a wasteland? Of course, it is impossible to ask the man himself. Instead, we can analyze his poem and see if any of the points Eliot makes can apply to our modern world.
To begin with, we must ask what the characteristics of "The Wasteland" are. What elements did Eliot use to create the physical and spiritual landscape of "The Wasteland?" First, Eliot uses heavy symbolism in his poem with a lot of emphasis placed on idealized mythology. Secondly, the inhabitants of the poem lack spirituality; both religious and personal. Eliot's final element of "The Wasteland" is fruitlessness.
Symbolism and idealized mythology factor into the poem heavily. Many times, rich, storybook-like mythological elements are compared with the landscape of the wasteland to give the audience an idea of how miserable it is. From part three, "The Fire Sermon," Eliot writes: ".The wind/ Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed." Eliot then describes trash that once floated down the Thames: "The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,/ Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends/ Or other testimony of summer nights/ The nymphs are departed."
From this comparison, the speaker of part three shows us that he sees garbage floating through the Thames as a symbol of happiness. The trash is evidence that somewhere, out in the city, someone was once enjoying a summer night. The summer nights make the speaker think of nymphs of old in their revelries. But the summer nights, like the nymphs, are gone forever.
How does the speaker's pining for an idealized past filled with nymphs and warm summer nights fit in with our modern society? Do we often find ourselves longing for a time when life seemed easier and more pleasant? Do we continue this longing even though it will never return? What's more, is the past that we long for merely trash floating down a river that we elevate to an ideal status? These are troubling questions that will have different answers for each person living in our society.
What the past was, however, is not as important as the fact that the speaker in part three spends his time longing for it. As a human being, he has the power to try to make his life better. He could make the nymphs return if he wished. But, due to his lack of spirit, and the fact that he lives in the past, the nymphs will not return to him. This cannot be said of every single member of our society, but the fact that Eliot pointed it out at all shows that he considered it one of society's problems. From listening to the way parents, the elderly, and even some younger people talk wistfully about the past, it is a problem that we still live with.
More symbolism is present in the speaker of another section of part three, Tiresias. In Greek mythology, Tiresias was an entity who was both male and female. Physically, he was blind, old, and weak. He had the power to predict the future flawlessly, but he was cursed because people rarely took his advice when it was offered.
The fact that Tiresias was both male and female may mean that Eliot meant him to represent all people, male and female of our society. It is when we realize that Tiresias is a representation of us, that we realize his other characteristics and ask ourselves if they represent our own. Tiresias is all-knowing, but he is also blind. Could it be that we are like him in that we possess much knowledge but do not possess the ability to use it effectively? With the daily advancements in technology we make, shouldn't we be doing more for our fellow man? Charity gets pushed to the wayside, and it seems that very few technological undertakings begin with the intent to better people's lives. Could that be our blindness?
Tiresias can also predict the future, but people rarely take his advice. Could this represent our morality as a society? Many of us know how we should conduct ourselves morally, but how often do we do the right thing? How often will we write off our own interests to live ethical lives?

Recently, several businesses have come under criticism for hiring illegal immigrants to work for them. This business practice works out well for business itself; because the immigrants are not on record, the businesses in question can get away with paying them less than the minimum wage. But this hurts both the immigrants who are barely making enough to live on and American citizens who can't get the jobs offered by the businesses because they would have to be paid more than the immigrants. The right decision is obvious in this case, but it is ignored in the interest of saving money.
Another element Eliot includes in "The Wasteland" is a lack of spirituality. This lack of spirituality includes both the spirit of religion (considered to be very important by Eliot) and the spirit of people living their everyday lives. This lack of spirituality is shown through comments about the emptiness present in the wasteland. Eliot writes in part three: "I can connect/ Nothing with nothing. My people humble people who expect/ Nothing."
This lack of spirituality in people's everyday lives also comes from constant infringement from outside forces. In part two, "A Game of Chess," a group of people are interrupted several times in their conversation in a bar. Often, the interruption comes right as they are on the verge of approaching deep and meaningful conversation. One of the speakers actually voices his discontent with the person he's talking to: "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?" The speaker never receives an answer from the other person, they are brutally interrupted by "O O O O that Shakespehrian Rag-" from the radio. After this interruption, their conversation switches to physical appearances.
Throughout this conversation, as one of the speakers is becoming more and more agitated from the attacks on her physical beauty, the bartender keeps shouting "HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME." The bartender keeps repeating this over and over until the trio ends their discussion and leaves.
Is that similar to our society? Are we made to keep talking about trivial things by outside forces? Are we never allowed to explore our motives and find ourselves? Will there always be some blaring television or an authority figure ushering us along to the next meaningless venture?
More attention seems to be drawn to the lack of religious spirituality of the inhabitants of the wasteland. There are many instances throughout the poem where Eliot touches on this. Perhaps the most obvious is where he writes in part five: "He who was living is now dead." This is a play on the Angel's declaration of Jesus' resurrection in the Bible. "Why do you search for the living among the dead?" and "He who was dead is now living!" Eliot tells us through this statement that the people of the wasteland turned their back on Jesus. To them, Jesus is dead.
However, Eliot also thinks that a tie to religion is necessary for humanity. He makes that known in the very next line, "We who were living are now dying." When the people of the wasteland had religion, they were alive. They have been slowly dying ever since they turned their backs on religion.
We are shown this lack of religion earlier in part five as well. Eliot includes a description of an empty church: "There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home." Further down in the description, Eliot includes a cock crow. The cock crowed as Peter denied Jesus for the third time. The cock crows as the people of the wasteland, like Peter, deny Jesus. The footnotes to the poem tell us that a cock crow also symbolizes the departure of ghosts. It is as if the spirit, that once inhabited the church is leaving the building forever.
Even earlier in part five, is a description of rocks with no water springing from them. In the Old Testament, Moses and the Hebrews become thirsty from wandering in the desert. Moses prays to God for a miracle to bring water to the people. God tells Moses to strike his staff against a rock, Moses does this, and water springs from the rock in a fountain, allowing the Hebrews to drink from it and be refreshed. Eliot shows us that the people of the wasteland have no water to refresh them as they wander in their spiritual desert. It may be that this is because they have turned their backs on religion and did not ask God for any help in their lives.
This can easily be transposed on our modern lives. Many people in our society have turned their backs on religion. When it is brought into the public eye, it seems to be represented as a sort of "flavor of the week" idea. Many people attend church on Christmas and Easter because it's one of their family traditions; other times of the year they ignore the church entirely. A few years ago, there was a jewelry fad. It was fashionable to wear a necklace with a jeweled ornamental angel. This trend has also seemed to have faded away recently.
However, it is not merely the lack of religion that I feel Eliot would be upset with. In many cases, people use their religion as a tool to harm other people. Reverend Fred Phelps, owner of .com, would be an example of this. Phelps focuses on the sections of the Old and New Testaments that declare homosexuality a sin, while ignoring the greater message of loving your fellow man. Phelps makes a seemingly minor sin more important than Jesus' command for him to love his neighbors. This is another way people can turn their backs on religion.
The third element of "The Wasteland" is fruitlessness. The fruitlessness of the wasteland can be seen in three areas: barrenness of the landscape, worldly riches, and the meaninglessness of human relationships.
The clearest examples of fruitlessness are in the way Eliot describes the landscape in the wasteland. From part one Eliot writes: "Unreal City,/ Under the brown fog of a winter dawn." This line is repeated again in part three with only a slight change. The brown fog is still hanging over the city, only now it's noon. A constant haze of brown fog is hanging over the city. Later in part three, during the song of the Thames-daughters, the very first lines are: "The river sweats/ Oil and tar."
The pollution of the wasteland can be taken two ways. The first is literal; Eliot believes that people are ruining the once-beautiful earth (represented in idealized mythology by the presence of the Thames- daughters) through industry. Another interpretation of the landscape is that the pollution represents what resides in the souls of the people in the wasteland.
Another example of fruitlessness is shown in worldly riches. Part four, "Death By Water," deals with this theme. This section describes the corpse of Phlebas, a Phoenician. The Phoenician's were mentioned earlier in "The Wasteland." The footnotes pointed out that they were considered to be very wealthy seamen. Eliot uses the Phoenicans to show us that wealth will not save us from death.
The title of part four comes from the scene with the fortune teller in part one; "Fear death by water," she tells the speaker. This is not the only reference to part one. In the same fortune teller scene, she draws the "Wheel." In Tarot, the card she draws is known as "The Wheel of Fortune," and it represents favorable luck in a person's life through monetary gain. Eliot uses this card from part one to issue a warning to his audience: "Gentile or Jew/ O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,/ Consider Phlebas, who was once as handsome and as tall as you."
The final example of fruitlessness is the meaninglessness of human relationships. This is most apparent in three separate scenes from the poem. The first example comes from part one: "A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many." These lines are a reference to Dante's Inferno; more specifically, the scene where Dante and Virgil were crossing Ante-Hell, the place where neutrals and opportunists spend eternity chasing a flying banner.
Eliot compares the people on the bridge in London to the neutrals and opportunists in Hell. The opportunists are neither good, nor evil, they merely existed. God put them in Hell because they never used their faculties as human beings to affect the earth for better or worse. They are being punished for being mindless drones. Eliot considers the crowd on the bridge of the same ilk as the crowd in Ante-Hell. Their existence is meaningless.
The most obvious example of meaningless human relationships comes from part three, where Tiresias describes the sexual encounter between a rich man and a girl. It is a joyless exercise. The girl has sex with the man merely to get him to go away. The only reason the man wants to have sex is because he feels a compulsory desire to do so. Neither participant gets any joy from it. The girl's last thought about it was "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
Idolized riches, pollution, and meaningless relationships have been a part of civilizations for thousands of years. It's not hard to imagine that they still exist in our time. I feel that Eliot presents them not to serve as an accusation of Western society, but rather an accusation of the baser problems facing the human soul. When dealing with fruitlessness, it is more of a personal battle that one that faces. In this case, the wasteland cannot only exist as the city you live in, but also within your own heart. This makes the poem seem more personable. It's easy to write off the problems of society, but harder to come to terms with problems that exist within your own life.
Would T.S. Eliot still think that we're living within a wasteland? In many ways we have advanced as a society. We are generally more accepting of other people and we've made great advancement in humanitarian aid to help combat poverty, hate, and disease.
But does that really save us? We are still guilty of all of the accusations Eliot made against us in "The Wasteland." While we've made some advances, that doesn't excuse us from our problems. I would think that for the most part, Eliot would still consider society to be a wasteland.
However, it is important for us to realize that "The Wasteland" should not merely be seen as a poem that damns us, but rather one that challenges us to overcome our problems. Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward solving it. Being aware of our faults as a culture is the first step in helping us to destroy them entirely. If we can derive some greater good from "The Wasteland" it should be that challenge for us to become better people.