Comment on the Theme and Structure of "The Waste Land".

Eliot's place in the history of English poetry is secured chiefly on the basis that he has evolved a new poetic technique. His approach to poetry was new and revolutionary.

Theme and Structure of the poem The Waste Land:

The mythical technique is the most striking aspect about the poem The

Waste Land. The purpose of the poem was to depict and to convey to the reader the ugliness, the desolation, the emptiness, and the aimlessness of modern life especially in relation to the modern man's attitude to sex and to religion. Eliot conveys this through the uses of various myths.

T.S. Eliot's Use of Myth in “The Waste Land”.

T.S. Eliot was the most eminent poet of modern age. He handles the theme of his poem masterly. In “The Waste Land” he uses mythical method to show the relationship of the present with the past.

Accordingly, Eliot uses a myth as the organizing principle in structure in “The Waste Land”, and he draws the myth from two sources: Sir James Frazer's book, The Golden Bough, and Miss Jessie Weston's book, From Ritual to Romance. He takes his mythical matter from Frazer's cultivation rituals and Miss Weston's Fisher King and Grail myths. 

What Eliot’s Vision of the World is as Expressed in “The Waste Land”?

"The Waste Land" is a very important land mark in the twentieth century literature. The poem reveals the disillusionment caused by the First World War. It vividly illustrates the complexity and machine like activity of modern man comparing with the glorious past of spiritual and moral highness.   

 

Eliot’s vision of the world is as expressed in "The Waste Land":

Sex is an important aspect of life. It is an expression of love and means of procreation. But today, sex has been perverted from its

proper function and is being utilized for animal pleasure. It has become a source of moral degradation. For instance, we find in the poem the picture of three Thames daughters who live on being the objects of sexual enjoyment in exchange of money. The mechanical sex relationship is also found in the love affair of the typist girl and her boyfriend. Not only has that Eliot also drawn the picture of a homosexual relation exemplified through Mr. Eugenides. Eliot observes that the whole Europe is destroying by the fire of sex. He sums up it by the words of St. Augustine:

What is Shaw's Concept of Life-force and of Superman in “Man and Superman”?

Shaw's Concept of Life-force and of Superman in "Man and Superman"

 

Life force is Shaw's name for creative evolution and his main philosophy outlook that he wants to draw in Man and Superman. Shaw called his play "a dramatic parable of creative evolution- and added that 'nobody noticed this new religion in the center of the intellectual whirlpool." Superman is the higher being evolved from those few who are dedicated to contemplation and who have rejected base aims and the pursuit of happiness as the goals of life.

 

Evaluate "Man and Superman" as a Philosophy and a Comedy.

Subtitled "A Comedy and a Philosophy," George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman is a comedy of ideas: its characters talk over philosophies such as social reform, capitalism, male and female roles in courtship, and other existential matters in elongated speeches that resemble arias in an opera.