Waiting in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’

Abstract

Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ has never ceased stirring controversy among critics and readers of English literature. The multiplicity of its implications and deliberate gaps to be filled by the readers are some of its outstanding traits. The present paper, however, focuses its attention on the act of waiting as an underlying theme unifying its loose structure. The study comprises two sections. The first is preliminary in that it highlights the great amount of debate and polar appraisals of the poem and its writer. The second, much the longest, explores the different dimensions of this topic.
Key words: Waiting; The Waste land; Meaninglessness; Redemption, Mythological; Saving