March 06


"The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot is in five sections.  Most of the sections were okay to understand, but one section in particular was hard for me to even read through.  IV "Death by Water" is the shortest section by far and I had to read through it a good five times before I understood it all.  I think Phlebas is dead or dying and is having his life flash before his eyes as he "[Enters] the whirlpool" of death.  The last stanza is speaking directly to a higher power and asking if the higher power would consider Phlebas in a place on high.  "The Fire Sermon" was very ironic.  A woman and man have coitus outside of wedlock and then the woman looks out her window at a church where it is a sin to have intercourse outside of wedlock.  I have no idea if these poems were meant to be funny at the time they were written, but this particular one seems quite comical to me.

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