Creative Writing Assignment on TS Eliot's "The Wastelan
Creative Writing Assignment on TS Eliot's "The Wasteland"
Emily: Mr. Gordon, it’s really nice to meet you. I'm really excited to talk about T.S. Eliot, his poetry, and his life, because he has always been one of my FAVORITE poets.
Mr. Gordon: Emily, the honor is mine. I am a fan of anyone who is a fan of Eliot’s. Now, where would you like to start? First, let me buy you a drink.
Emily: I’ll take water with lemon, please. Mr. Gordon, I have heard a lot about Eliot’s thoughts on the idea of head and heart. What exactly does he mean by this?
Mr. Gordon: Well, as in the Wasteland and Four Quartets, they enact a classic opposition between the head and heart. It is re-cast in the light of medical science as an opposition between brain and nervous system and heart and blood; between the flickering and circulating; between what the doctors of Eliot’s youth had discovered about the way we work and what King Charles’ doctor had discovered; between a modern age of nerves and an older, nobler age of blood.
Emily: Wow, I never knew that Eliot was at all interested in medicine and how the body worked. I thought he only wrote poetry.
Mr. Gordon: Yes, Eliot was a very deep man. There is a lot about him that people don’t know or never realized.
Emily: In Wasteland, the wife says “My nerves are bad tonight,” and later she seems distracted and says, “I can connect/Nothing with nothing.” Where did Eliot come up with all of this, or what does it mean?
Mr. Gordon: This “nerves” passage relates to Eliot’s life at the time with his wife, which he is referring to the state of his and his wife’s nerves which are upsetting, troubled, and worried. In this poem, it is apparent that the woman’s nerves are bad because she is constantly concerned and worried with them.
Emily: So where does this whole concept of head and heart come into play, Mr. Gordon?
Mr. Gordon: The woman seems as though she hates facing reality. There is a force represented in poem in terms of heart and blood in which the realities are discounted. Wasteland begins with an ironic reminder of that season when sap and blood stir in the veins of...