Juan: "The Waste Land"

When I read Juan's post about "The waste Land" by T. S. Eliot I immediately thought: “He had pretty similar ideas and thoughts about this poem as me”. Juan, as well as me, had problems understanding the poem because, apart from its difficult language, it has many paratextual information. In his blog, Juan explains that it was very difficult for him to fully understand the meaning of the poem. But, anyway, he liked it and also he wrote he wanted to know more about the context of the poem, in order to understand it better.

I think Juan did a great job. I could notice his interest about the poem. He developed his ideas in a clear way. It was very easy to understand what he wanted to express.
Oscar.

...Hopeless in the lonely nothingness...

I will write about my impressions and thoughts that this poem produced in me.
In order to understand the whole picture of this poem it is compulsory to read and reflect, first, on the title and also to reflect on each subtitle.
The waste Land immediately calls the reader to think of an empty land, to a place where there is nothing but misery and pain. The title speaks by itself and invites us to locate ourselves in the emptiness.

The first subtitle is The burial of the dead and, as the main title, located us again in a dark place, where the process of death is taking place. The second subtitle is A game of chess and it makes us think, what do death and game have to do with each other? Here, T. S. Eliot plays with our problem of understanding the meaning of the poem when he presents death and game in the same train of thought, within this poem. The third subtitle is The fire sermon and it tempts us to try to guess what sermon was the one that appears in this part. The fourth subtitle is Death by water and as it is regular in the author’s mood, death is again present. The last subtitle is What the thunder said, here the image of nature, especially a thunder that depicts the power of nature beyond men’s power.

If we analyze the five subtitles we can infer that the meaning of the poem has to do with a desert place, where there is death, where there is worldly needs, where religion seeks its place in a without faith world, a place where nature is angry with humans because of the harm they have done upon it. This the waste land that T. S Eliot is depicting; where he is hopeless in the lonely nothingness.

Money + Gifts = Love... isn’t?

According to my own understanding the main conflict in the story (“The Rocking Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence) is the cold way of treatment that the mother had with her son. D. H. Lawrence represented this issue in a careless and materialistic mother who has raised her son based on the importance of material things as a response to low love levels. In other words, the mother was always concerned about providing her small son as many material things he wanted, which was, of course, insufficient because they were a poor family.

Paul’s mother raised him with the belief that love brings happiness, which was an important element in Paul’s behaviour because he started foreseeing the results of horse races, which led him to start betting in order to get more money to give his mother.

Misunderstanding love with money can lead to the belief that this feeling can be measured and therefore be bought. To conclude, giving money or presents in order to receive love is an important issue to bear in mind in this materialistic and technological society.

More space, more opportunities, more equality!

There is a real need to have a space, both real and metaphorical to write. Just like Virginia Woolf wrote in her essay, women need a physical space to put pen to paper all their thoughts and ideas and also they necessitate a space in their society to express their feeling concretely.

What Virginia Woolf is doing in her essay is to call for more participation from women’s part in the writing process of their society. She is demanding more room for her genre when she says they need more space to write. The author claims an equal role for women in society. She has pointed out that many women do not have the same opportunities than men have when the writing process is taking place.

In the same way, Woolf is claiming for more internal space for women to write. In other words, she is arguing that women need to free themselves from men’s (and sometimes themselves) yoke if they want to have a real space to express themselves.

To conclude, Virginia has raised an important issue, the necessity of more space for women’s development in a chauvinist society.