T.S. Eliots The Waste Land and Yulisa Maddy’s No Past No Present No Future :: Eliot Wasteland Maddy Future Present Past Essays

Death and Dying in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Yulisa Maddy’s No Past No Present No Future I am immortal. Although I realize that I will die, I don’t believe it. The fear of death motivates me to ignore my mortality and, in motivating me to ignore, allows me to live a jaded, happy life. If death were a predominant thought, then appreciating life would seem difficult—unless of course I changed my name to Harold. Everyone confronts the idea of death sooner or later; different people just deal with death in different ways. Death or the fear of death can create a greater appreciation of life. I once heard a story about a monk. This monk was on a walk through the woods one day when a bear or a lion or a reasonable facsimile thereof appeared as if from nowhere. The monk’s ‘fight, fly, or hit the fence’ mechanics kicked in, and he was off. He was chased to the face of a cliff, so he began to climb it. Now the cliff was a vertical wall, and the monk was unable to climb very high. He clinged to the smallest of cracks in this wall. When he looked down, there were more of whatever had chased him there, but when he looked back up, he noticed a strawberry growing on the face of this cliff. He ate the strawberry—it was perfect. The strawberry was far from perfect, but because death was ten feet below him, it tasted better than any meal he had ever had. Death created a greater appreciation of life in the monk. Life should be lived out at every moment; death creates immediacy in living li fe to the fullest. As T. S. Eliot put it, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Eliot’s The Waste Land is the portrait of a society whose culture and infrastructure is dying. The post-WWI-era saw Europe decaying. The massive destruction to its cities combined with the incredible loss of life created disillusion in Europe. But The Waste Land is not merely a picture of European society dying; it is Eliot’s commentary on his society, and his attempt to save it. Tiresias is the only main character in The Waste Land. He rarely has an active role in the poem, though. He serves as an onlooker—a reporter—to and a narrator of this waste land: Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Yulisa Maddy’s No Past No Present No Future :: Eliot Wasteland Maddy Future Present Past Essays Death and Dying in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Yulisa Maddy’s No Past No Present No Future I am immortal. Although I realize that I will die, I don’t believe it. The fear of death motivates me to ignore my mortality and, in motivating me to ignore, allows me to live a jaded, happy life. If death were a predominant thought, then appreciating life would seem difficult—unless of course I changed my name to Harold. Everyone confronts the idea of death sooner or later; different people just deal with death in different ways. Death or the fear of death can create a greater appreciation of life. I once heard a story about a monk. This monk was on a walk through the woods one day when a bear or a lion or a reasonable facsimile thereof appeared as if from nowhere. The monk’s ‘fight, fly, or hit the fence’ mechanics kicked in, and he was off. He was chased to the face of a cliff, so he began to climb it. Now the cliff was a vertical wall, and the monk was unable to climb very high. He clinged to the smallest of cracks in this wall. When he looked down, there were more of whatever had chased him there, but when he looked back up, he noticed a strawberry growing on the face of this cliff. He ate the strawberry—it was perfect. The strawberry was far from perfect, but because death was ten feet below him, it tasted better than any meal he had ever had. Death created a greater appreciation of life in the monk. Life should be lived out at every moment; death creates immediacy in living li fe to the fullest. As T. S. Eliot put it, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Eliot’s The Waste Land is the portrait of a society whose culture and infrastructure is dying. The post-WWI-era saw Europe decaying. The massive destruction to its cities combined with the incredible loss of life created disillusion in Europe. But The Waste Land is not merely a picture of European society dying; it is Eliot’s commentary on his society, and his attempt to save it. Tiresias is the only main character in The Waste Land. He rarely has an active role in the poem, though. He serves as an onlooker—a reporter—to and a narrator of this waste land: Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,