The Waste Land (1922) Summary

I. The Burial of the Dead: T.S. Eliot presents his narrator, a woman, Marie. She discusses the seasons of a year and relates them to the seasons of her life. She tells us that beauty can come out of desolation and that there is a regeneration of things in spring. She discusses feeling free in the mountains and her penchant for reading. She talks of roots that clutch, a reference to the ties we have to loved ones, and how we strive to hang on to them with memory after they are gone. She says fear is in a handful of dust, referencing the idea that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. She alludes to the fact that fear has paralyzed her actions, and she has sought comfort in a clairvoyant. At the end...