lunes, 10 de marzo de 2008

The Waste Land: Describing a utopia?

As Camilo Bermudez said, throughout the second part of the Waste Land, A Game of Chess, T.S. Eliot compares death to a game. The game of chess that Eliot proposes to play is simply wasting time, wating for something to come.

And if it rains, a closed car at four.
 
And we shall play a game of chess, 
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

I believe the chess game might represent life and the players are simply wating for death to arrive, which would be written as a knock on the door. This connects to what I said in my previous blog which is death as a natural part of nature. Humans, or the players of a game, just accept the time when it comes.

I think this second part of the Waste Land is related to the movie The Seventh Seal. In this movie the main character plays a game of chess with Death, and simply waits for the time to come when he is beaten by him. The same thing is told in the quotation above where two people play a game of chess determining their life or death.


When I read the third part of The Waste Land called The Fire Sermon, I couldn't help but notice the numerous times the author talked about the same things over and over again. In various cases Eliot mentions the "Unreal City" and names it as if the sermon was directed to it. For ex:

Unreal City 
Under the brown fog of a winter noon 
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant 
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

I believe that in this case the three lines after "Unreal City" are directed towards it. Kind of as if there was a colon in front of it, kind of as if the other lines were said in honor to it. I believe this "Unreal City" might be a utopia or a dystopia because utopias and dystopias are fake. They are bad or good worlds that don't exist. Considering what comes after this line, I believe T.S. Eliot might be imagining a utopia in which everything occurs well. I think it is a utopia because it is set in winter, and Eliot describes winter as the best season of the year. However, I might be wrong in my hypothetical thinking, maybe the "Unreal City" has nothing to do with utopias and dystopias. What I do know is that the author wants to make this line stand out. I know this because in the first part of The Waste Land the quote "Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon" appeared identically with one small change. First it said dawn, and then it said noon. This means this poem is set in the Unreal City, but at different times.

I also agree with Mariana Rodriguez about the mentioning of the Inferno in The Fire Sermon. On line 245 Eliot makes allusion to Dante and Virgil in their voyage through hell.

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 
And walked among the lowest of the dead.

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