The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

When I read this poem, I really did not understand what was going on. I was highly distracted by all the footnotes and found myself going back and forth trying to decipher this poem. The final product of reading the poem ended with a very confused version of me. I decided to read a summary of the poem off of SparkNotes and finally understood what was going on in this poem. In the first section, “The Burial of the Dead”, the audience of the poem feels crowded with many speakers. The speakers want to talk but they are burdened with dead people. In the second section, “A Game of Chess”, contains two scenes, one of a wealthy woman being caught up in frantic and meaningless thoughts and the other scene consisting of two women in a bar talking about one of their friends that is on the brink of losing her husband. In the third section, “The Fire Sermon”, opens with a scene of a man fishing on a desolate riverside and meets a tarot card reader. I’m not sure if that is exactly what happens or if I misinterpreted the poem and summary. In the fourth section, “Death by Water”, talks about a man that has drowned and creatures of the sea have picked his dead body apart. This is also the shortest section of the poem. In the last section, “What The Thunder Said”, begins with a scene of mass destruction but then the poem shifts to another part of the world and ends in a very confusing way. I am really hoping that class on Tuesday will help me better understand this poem!