T.S. Eliot

"The Waste Land" is one of the most widely read poems in the world and one of the least understood. My only prior knowledge of this poem was a mention of it in a Steven King novel I have read and even so they were merely prologue excerpts of the poem. Also, my sister, who is six years my senior, told me two things about the poem. One is that the only line she remembered was "April is the cruelest month" and that she preferred Yeats's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." As such, I went into this poem expecting an unenjoyable and morbid tale. I was not disappointed. While the tale may be morbid and I may not have enjoyed it I still understood it, or so I think I did. The eponymous "Waste Land" is Europe and it is not a physical wasteland but a metaphysical one. The people of Europe have been shaped into cold, emotionless people with poor relationships with one another. The concept of death, which Yeats explores throughout the poem, is more of a death of spirit and of hope. Eliot shows that the "interpersonal malaise" that had fallen over modern Europe was the wound that caused the Wasteland. What I noticed about the poem (through the help of the footnotes) was how "the Waste Land" moves from one person and place to the next. Eliot describes how the cold hard world of Europe is like "dry sterile thunder without rain" and the world as a mountain with "no water but only rock" (Eliot 1212). This is my belief of how Eliot sees Europe: capable of making sounds but otherwise impotent and without the ability to affect the dry mountain.

James Joyce

After reading so much poetry, I thought it would be a relief to finally read prose again. I was wrong. Not to say James Joyce is not important in the development of the modern novel as a legitimate work of art, and I can name numerous authors who have been greatly influenced by "Ulysses," but found Joyce's writing to be unimaginative. While I am sure there are many who would disagree with me, I found Joyce's "Dublin" to be a bit pointless, or at least the section of it found in the Anthology. Maybe I am unable to grasp the subtlety of the work or the message Joyce tries to present(if he is in fact presenting one), but from what I read of the life of Maria everything seemed ordinary and altogether uneventful. The title of the excerpt from Joyce's novel suggests that Maria will die soon, given that Clay was originally used as part of that Hallow's Eve game Maria played with the two girls and that Clay symbolized a coming death. However, I saw nothing in this chapter to suggest that Maria had any illness or any enemies who would wish her dead, making the very meaning of this chapter a bit puzzling for me. Perhaps Joyce wishes to show the nature of the people in modern Ireland and he depicted a modern Irish woman's life through Maria. If this is the case then there are several places where he describes the mind set of Maria, and possibly through her the mind set of common Irish women, such as when the narrators states that, "She arranged in her mind all she was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own money in your pocket" (Joyce 1135). Of course, this could mean different things depending on the person reading it. For someone in Joyce's time it could mean that the people of Ireland truly did wish for independence from England and that the "own money" was a separate form of Irish currency from the English pound. All of this is mere supposition, however, as I said earlier, this particular section rather baffled me.

William Butler Yeats

Although Years probably never intended for it to be so, "The Second Coming" is what I consider (along with Poe's "The Raven") to be the perfect horror poem. The imagery of this poem instills fear in the reader from start, with the devolving of human civilization into "mere chaos," and to the finish, with the monster with head of man and body of lion moving slowly and ceaselessly towards Bethlehem to be born. Two other works come to mind immediately while reading this magnificent poem of Yeats's. These are Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu." The influences can be seen in Achebe's novel, obviously for the title of the work, and Lovecraft's short story for the similar depictions of chaos created by the coming of a monster. As for the actual details and elements of the poem, all I can say is that rarely have I seen such a poem with as many memorable lines as "The Second Coming." The famous opening lines of the poem "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" are so memorable for the disturbing sense of impending collapse portrayed by those words (Yeats 1122). The situation the opening lines depict reminds me most of a drain and that all the worlds order and the connections used to hold humanity's societies together are torn apart and all are circling down a dark drain away into oblivion. Yeats describes the coming creature as "a shape with lion body and the head of a man, [with] a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun" (Yeats 1123). The sheer awesome picture of ruthless might this creature possesses is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this poem for me. The Second Coming is meant to be the coming of Jesus Christ, to redeem the world one last time and to bring finality to God's creation. The beast Yeats depicts is most likely the anti-christ, characterized as a sphinx most likely because of the the connotation the sphinx carries in Greek culture as a demon of pure destruction and ill fortune.

World War 1

World War 1 was thought to be the war that would end all wars. The sheer scale of the conflict absorbed the entire planet as resources and materiel were flooded into Europe to support one side or the other. The work I found most intriguing is a famous poem that I have encountered before: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est." This haunting poem reminded me greatly of the novel by Erich Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front. Both works are presented by a soldier's perspective and both show the same experience. The concept of War is by no means a stranger to mankind. Wars have been fought for as long as there have been nations. It is only recently, with the advent of newer and more clever ways of killing each other, that such tremendous death tolls as those seen in the World Wars have been achieved. Before I speak directly of the poem and its meaning for me, I would like to recount an experience from my high school days that I think of whenever I read a poem, short story, novel, etc. that details the atrocities soldiers and civilians face in wars. In my Junior English class, our teacher was speaking to us about an article she read in the local newspaper. The article was about a high schooler, much like ourselves, who had read Remarque's novel and decided to write an essay (which the newspaper published) about the need for peace in the world, the futility of war, and the need for greater understanding and compassion between all people. You may be expecting me to tell you that our teacher was singing this boys praises. Not quite. Our teacher lividly disagreed and said that simply because he read "All Quiet on the Western Front" he cannot possibly understand the nature of war and that he did not have the right to say wars should not be fought. All I took away from her argument was that it is easy to say wars are worth fighting when its not you in the trenches. So much for the civilian's perspective. Now, as for Dulce Et Decorum Est, I found this particular poem tremendously morbid and somber. The tone the poet sets is unbearably bleak using lines such as "the white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin" (Owen 1102). You can imagine the horrifying images that passed through the soldiers as they hauled their ally's corpse back to the body wagon. What makes this scene all the more poignant is that these soldiers have served their time in the trenches, at least for the time being. They are dead tired and moving back to rest and reprieve, and suddenly one of them is killed by green toxic gas. The most powerful lines of this poem are, in my opinion, however, the closing four: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori" (Owen 1102). Sweet and fitting is it to die for your fatherland.

George Bernard Shaw

At first reading Pygmalion, I could easily understand Shaw's connection with Henrik Ibsen. It was also only with Shaw that I first understood the nature of the transition from Victorian to Modern writing. In Victorian literature there was a tendency towards heroic characters or at least characters with above average moral tendencies. Or as Freud would say, persons dominated by their super-egoes. In Pygmalion, the characters are for lack of a better word, more complicated. In the first act the main characters of the play are introduced: Higgins and Eliza. Higgins is a bossy and somewhat boorish expert on phonetics and Eliza is a self-pitying and somewhat selfish flower-girl. Neither of these characters would be considered Victorian by any notable measure. What struck me most about Pygmalion, besides its title, is the true complexity of the characters. No character is inherently good or inherently bad. Each one has characteristics, bad habits, tendencies, whatever you wish to call them that both earn the audiences disdain and admiration. For example, in the opening act of the play Higgins says to Eliza, "A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere - no right to live" (Shaw 1013). Only a few lines later, however, Higgins (and this is merely stage direction but the narrator is, I believe, to be trusted) gives Eliza money while "hearing in it [the church bells] the voice of God, rebuking him for his pharisaic want of charity to the poor girl" (Shaw 1014). Shaw demonstrates through Higgins mankind's propensities towards cruelty and charity. Higgins is not altogether cruel and not altogether kind, he is merely human.

Thomas Hardy

Hardy's "Epitaph" seemed to be a strange piece for him to write, especially at the time he did. Hardy died in 1928 and this particular poem was written in 1899. Some people may write their epitaph if they think they are near death, but I do not recall Hardy suffering any severe illness at this time. For whatever reason Hardy wrote "Epitaph" (and it may not even be an epitaph for himself) the poem contains many wordings which I find somewhat difficult to interpret. In the opening lines of the poem, the speaker states that "I never cared for life: Life cared for me, and hence I owed it some fidelity" (Hardy 1079). In saying this, does Hardy mean that the world cared whether he lived or died or does he mean that he feels that life treated him well? Further, when Hardy says he owes life some fidelity, the question arises How can one owe fidelity, which usually means loyalty, duty, or service, to an abstract concept such as life? Later, in the closing of the poem, Hardy writes "'though didst ask no ill-advised reward, Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find'" (Hardy 1079). This ill-advised reward may be many things, but one idea that comes to mind is the old idea that the things men most want are the things absolutely worst for them. These things such as money, power, distinction, and longer life are amongst the rewards most men would hope to get out of life and I believe Hardy did not want them.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Out of any poet who wrote during the Victorian, I would say that Hopkins's poetry most directly matched his personality and life. Many of the poems featured in the Longman anthology concerning Hopkins greatly matched the description the anthology gives for this particular poet. Many of his writings were religiously based and perhaps intended as tools of religious inspiration and conversion. Also, many of his poems dealt with his poor emotional and physical health. The poem that struck out most to me was "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day." To me, the title of this poem is referring to the condition Hopkins found himself in during his time in Liverpool, surrounded by the filfth of the slums and the emotionally draining occupation of Jesuit Priest in such harsh conditions. Because of all his work Hopkins was doing for the Lord, I believe he expected some kind of earthly compensation, but all he ever received was poor health. Hopkins writes, "O what black hours we have spent" and later "where I say hours I mean years, mean life" (Hopkins 778). These lines indicated his life is of a dark and ill state. The dark Hopkins speaks of is, I believe, a reference to the night rather than the day the title of the poem speaks of. While he sits in the darkness of the night, he should be sleeping peacefully but is kept awake and tired. Hopkins desires peace of body and mind and I believe this poem does a most adequate job of conveying that feeling.