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In T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land there are several allusions. The most profound allusion in the poem is relayed through the character of Tiresias. Tiresias is a blind prophet who shows up in several different literary works. In The Waste Land Tiresias is an allusion to Christ. This allusion is best illustrated in section 3 of The Waste Land "The Fire Sermon".
The first description involving Tiresias occurs in "The Fire Sermon", "I Tiresias though blind, throbbing between two lives, / Old man with wrinkled female breasts I can see (ll 218-219)." The first impression the reader is given of Tiresias is of a blind man who is old and wrinkled, but able to see things. Tiresias sees many things throughout the poem. According to J.G. Keogh in, O City, O City: Oedipus in The Waste Land, "Tiresias can imagine how things look from what he hears: the clatter of breakfast things, the thudding of tins, the sounds of the typist's young admirer as he gropes his way downstairs in the dark (pg.194)." Tiresias is able to use his other senses to see what is going on around him. He becomes an observer of everything around him.
Tiresias is used in the poem as the observer of the typist and her young lover. He sees all of the hurt going on between the characters. Tiresias states that, "And I Tiresias have foresuffered all / Enacted on this same divan or bed (ll.243-244)." Tiresias seems most Christ like at this moment in the poem. According to Steven Helmling in The Grin of Tiresias: humor in the Waste Land, "Tiresias participates in the suffering he sees, like Christ; and he has foresuffered all like Christ (...
All the world's a party And the people are merely guests They all have their ups and downs And the host can play many types of music Hoping that the guests will enjoy it The girls that think they're all that Are trying to get attention while faking intoxication While the jocks with their leather jackets Play beer pong while being loud and obno...
Many poems are written about death. The two poets William Cullen Bryant and Emily Dickinson were very influential trancendental writers. Bryant writing Thanatopsis And Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" are basically more alike then than they are similar for the fact that there views on Death are the same, but what happens to yo...
A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young," also known as Lyric XIX in A Shropshire Lad, holds as its main theme the premature death of a young athlete as told from the point of view of a friend serving as pall bearer. The poem reveals the concept that those dying at the peak of their glory or youth are really quite lucky. The first few readings...
What perspectives do Harrison's poems open up on his relationship with his parents and family background in general? Tony Harrison's family background and his relations with his parents is one that both confuses and overwhelms us. I use the present tense because I believe that Tony Harrison still has a relationship with his parents even though they...
Emily Dickenson, an unconventional 19th century poet, used death as the theme for many of her poems. Dickenson's poems offer a creative and refreshingly different perspective on death and its effects on others. In Dickenson's poems, death is often personified, and is also assigned to personalities far different from the traditional "horror movie"...
