Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … 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
Gabriel, for the first time, understood how the dead Michael Furey still lived within the soul of his wife, Gretta. The snow outside was falling, and he also understood that the snow -- and death -- just like all other natural forces in the world affected everyone equally. He was no exception: neither his intellect nor being loved by a woman could save him from death.
This is the case with Gabriel in "The Dead" as well. Throughout much of the action of the story, Gabriel appears at a loss as to who he is, which is directly related to how he is perceived. The first time in the story this is noticed is to the beginning, when he gives a coin to Lily out of an unspecified yet apparently selfless motive. Gabriel wants to share
Wastelands of Labyrinths, Wastelands of the Modern Past and Present The wasteland of myth is a place where people have been mislead, where they dwell in a terrible half-existence, living a lie. Perhaps the most familiar modern expressions of the word 'wasteland' are those of T.S. Eliot's poem about "The Wasteland" and the idea of a modern, suburban 'teenage wasteland.' When people speak about a teenage wasteland, they usually are referring
Miller and Eliot on Beauty Comparing and Contrasting "Beauty" in Miller and Eliot Arthur Miller and T.S. Eliot are two 20th century American playwrights. While the latter is more commonly noted for expatriating to Britain and writing some of the most memorable poetry of the early 20th century, the former is noted for his famous depiction of the common man's struggle to find meaning and fulfillment in Death of a Salesman. As
The central focus of the book is the search for self and identity and an attempt to answer the question of what happens when men leave the protective normative and restraining influence of society. The central figure of Kurtz is a man who has broken free of the constraints of a sick society. However the novel also questions whether Kurtz too has become evil and lost his own sense
" In other words, you can't change the way you are or the way you think by staying in the same clothes or the same consciousness that you have been in all this time. You must be willing to sacrifice and accept that things may get worse before they get better. "…to be restored, our sickness must grow worse" Eliot writes, and this is actually a recipe for emotional health
Q3. Explain the importance of the Fisher King in Modern Literature. The Fisher King is the wounded king that motivates Sir Galahad to find the Holy Grail to heal him and his people: the quest narrative is one of the most significant narratives in all of literature, and the Moderns despaired of finding a quest in the modern, faithless, directionless world. The Fisher King's wound symbolizes his lack of fertility, which