Ceremonies In The Waste Land

Ceremonies in "The Waste Land"

Ceremonies are prevalent throughout T.S. Eliot’s poem "The
Waste Land". Eliot relies on literary contrasts to illustrate the
specific values of meaningful, effectual rituals of primitive society
in contrast to the meaningless, broken, sham rituals of the modern
day. These contrasts serve to show how ceremonies can become broken
when they are missing vital components, or they are overloaded with
too many. Even the way language is used in the poem furthers the
point of ceremonies, both broken and not. In section V of The Waste
Land, Eliot writes,

"After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over diezt mountains
He who was living is now dead" (ll. 322-328).

The imagery of a primal ceremony is evident in this passage. The last
line of "He who was living is now dead" shows the passing of the
primal ceremony; the connection to it that was once viable is now
dead. The language used to describe the event is very rich and vivid:
red, sweaty, stony. These words evoke an event that is without the
cares of modern life- it is primal and hot. A couple of lines later
Eliot talks of "red sullen faces sneer and snarl/ From doors of
mudcracked houses" (ll. 344-345). The...

Ceremonies In The Waste Land

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