Biblical and modernist representations of death and faith

¶ … Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot

In this passage, Eliot invokes the image of Christ (the Son of Man). Eliot paints a picture of modern life where all faith is dead. False idols or images have been shattered, as occurred with incident of the Golden Calf in the book of Exodus, but there is nothing in their place in modernity. The eternally regenerative tree of life (also a reference to the cross) is now dead, and gives no fruit -- or comfort. The stone split by Moses, another Biblical reference, gives no water -- and also no prophesy for the future.

"Design" by Robert Frost

Frost is chilled by the sight of a moth captured in a spider's web. Frost wonders what force brought the moth in contact with the spider's web. Such a small, apparently chance event ended the moth's life, yet sustained the spider's life. Frost seems uncertain, but equally disturbed at the prospect that God by divine design or fate by cold chance precipitated this occurrence.

"On receiving news of the war" by Isaac Rosenberg

Rosenberg's poem conjures up a physical, metaphorical image of the specter of war. A spirit of a person torn by the red fangs of either death, war, or some diabolical, physically imagined agent hangs over the poem. This dead spirit, representing all of the fallen soldiers, is in neither heaven nor hell (suggesting a crisis of faith in this modernist poem) but is lonely in the never-never land where he mourns the loss of life of his colleagues.

"The Dead" by James Joyce