T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land describes a modern society plunged into absolute chaos and plagued by the complications of industrialization. The poem's groups of images vividly describe streets littered and overcrowded with people, while the text itself reads abruptly and harshly. Therefore, Eliot's poem strongly suggests that the negative effects of industrialization and urbanization far outweigh the benefits. Eliot's fragmented language and discontinuous images reflect the ways in which an urbanized society limits the individual's ability to communicate with others in that society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay A striking feature of Eliot's poetry is the point of view from which it is told. The Waste Land does not contain a single central speaker, creating a sense of disorder. Despite this, the poem reads like the internal dramatic monologue of a modern society. Eliot writes, “Unreal City, / Under the brown mist of a winter dawn, / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many” (lines 60-63). The fact that the poem is not told from a specific point of view reflects the sense of disconnection that Eliot is trying to portray. Here Eliot juxtaposes different ideas, which, like crowds of people and questions about time, are general concerns of a collective group of people. In doing so, he takes seemingly random and scattered ideas and weaves them together to read them as the stream of consciousness, the random thoughts, of a modern society. The resulting effect is a sense of indifference that comes from loneliness and isolation. The effect is ironic: although people move together in large crowds, the individual still feels alone. Despite the numerous advantages resulting from the modernization of society, according to Eliot, isolation represents a serious disadvantage. A motif in Eliot's poetry is the cycle of life and death. Throughout the poem, Eliot includes references to what would normally be a continuous cycle of life after death that has instead been fragmented and interrupted. "'That corpse which you planted last year in your garden,/'Has it begun to bud? Will it bloom this year?'" (Lines 71-72). Eliot refers to the ritual death of the fertility god before rebirth, which is simply one episode in a continuous cycle. However, instead of continuing the cycle, it is truncated and stopped at the moment of death and does not proceed towards the process of rebirth. This disruption reflects the destructive effect of life in urban society. Things come to a halt due to the overwhelming isolation. They cannot continue in their natural cycles, because the inconveniences of modern society disconnect what has kept things continuous. The modernization of the workplace is perhaps the one Eliot criticizes most in his poetry. In the second part of the poem, Eliot offers a glimpse into the domestic life of a typist, writing, "When a fair woman stoops to madness and/ walks about her room again, alone/ smooths her hair with the automatic hand, / and you put a record on the gramophone" (lines 223-226). The poem describes the typist in her home life, but even in this familiar and informal context, the typist identifies with her work. Eliot's use of synecdoche reinforces the overall sense of disconnection offered by the poem. Identifying the typist as a hand and not as a person shows how the woman, even when not working, identifies with her work. As a result of modernization, the craftsmen were dispersed in a chain ofassembly. It is no longer necessary for a person to be qualified and competent, but rather isolated and specialized to carry out a type of work. In the case of the typist, her work in society comes to identify her as a whole, reducing her from a whole person to mere hands. In this way, Eliot does not describe a whole person, but rather empty men with no sense of identity or personal voice. The use of rimain this passage only helps to convey a sense of habitual and repetitive behavior, once again adding to the sense of isolation. Eliot also uses the motif of water in his poem to show the negative effects of modernization on society. Water has often been an archetypal symbolism for baptism in literature, often exemplifying the act of taking something old or corrupt and purifying it into something fresh and new. However, this is not the case with The Waste Land. Part IV of the poem is entitled Death on the Water and describes Fleba's passive death. "An undercurrent/ Gathered his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell/ He passed the stages of his age and youth/ Entering the whirlpool" (Lines 315-318). Eliot's description shows a very passive and peaceful death by drowning. The choice of the word "enter" by extension also connotes a willingness to die in the water, making water, in the context of this poem, highly ironic. This ironic use of water heightens the sense of discontinuity and unpredictability of the chaotic modern world. Water functions as a killing force, a death trap in this poem rather than the archetypal cleansing role of baptism. Another example where Eliot makes an ironic reference to water is found in the last part of the poem. Part V What the Thunder Said is Eliot's conclusion to the poem. “On the mountains there is not even silence/but dry and barren thunder without rain” (Lines 341-342). Eliot thus creates a scene very similar to the one in which God appears to Noah before the rain. In the poem, God identifies himself with Thunder and appears on the mountains, but does not bring with him the symbolic baptismal rain. Here, once again, Eliot's choice of the word "barren" to describe the thunder connotes a sense of passivity which, by extension, also creates a sense of hopelessness about the situation. The effect of urbanization is felt even in the remote mountainous environment, showing the extent of the negative impact of modern life. Finally, Eliot uses a mode of divine intervention when God speaks in the last part of section V of his poem. What begins with a paragraph containing quintessentially Christian imagery quickly moves from it into unfamiliar territory. The God that Eliot inserts into his poetry is foreign and unknown and speaks in disconcerting terms. "Da/... Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata" (lines 401, 433). Instead of speaking in common colloquial language, God speaks and offers his solution in Sanskrit. However, even when the solution is translated into English, it is still enigmatic. The translation of “From” into “Control yourselves,” “Give,” and “have compassion” does not provide a simple answer to resolve the complexities of urbanization. In this context, “From” is unique and in itself proves to be the most abrupt when reading the poem, while at the same time creating a sense of senseless meaninglessness. Although "From" contains the answer, it appears incognito, seemingly like childish gibberish, creating a dramatic antithesis to the expected revelation. This reflects Eliot's idea of ​​the futility of the situation, while urbanization and modernization create those negative effects as demonstrated in the poem, very little can be done to change it. Furthermore, the shift from Christian to Hindu imagery reflects the uncharitable territory of.