What Is The Role Of Bias Play In The Waste Land?

The Waste Land invokes a feeling of nostalgia for a time gone by coupled with a sense of dissonance for what the world has become. The last vestiges, like the fragments stand as reminders that we can never go back. This embrace of the fragmentation offers no resolve but rather demonstrates a sort of encumbered acceptance of the world as it is now with ever so brief glimpses of hope, which come and go. Even the structure of the poem itself is as presented as fragmentary, a reflection of the actuality the poet perceived. This new era being ushered in represented all that was bleak and cold and unfeeling. These ‘fragments’ are used as a means to “denote the remains of both past and present desire that are attached to their history by the tenuous …show more content…
His role within the text is that of the impartial observer, he is depicted as “blind, throbbing between two lives” (294). His role, although intended to be that of an all seeing being which is, as Michael North put it, “both of the crowd and outside it”, becomes essential in uniting the “individual and community” instead becomes an “incarnation of the failure of reconciliation”. In this manner he serves as “a mere juxtaposition of part and whole that dramatizes the gulf between them”. In this way, Tiresias is therefore more representative of those dualistic fears of the poet of the “fragmentation and loneliness” coupled with a “fear of featureless uniformity” (North 100). Tiresias’ own dualism seems to be representative of this hope for reprisal, the degree of perceptual impartiality, or the ability to see the individual within the greater whole. It is perhaps then our own failing that we are unable to envision a plane of existence outside our own. In that way, we have fragmented those pieces of our individual selves, which comprise the whole of …show more content…
As London Bridge falls down, a decision must be made, action must be taken. He asks, "Shall I at least set my lands in order?" (V, 425) and so the question posited is that of what action should be taken. The choice to abandon this life in the hopes of achieving one with meaning is made evident as he stands among the ruins, these fragments, he repeats "Shantih shantih shantih" (V, 433), a line which Eliot translated roughly as “a peace that passes understanding”. Just as Phlebas before him, he chooses to depart from this plane of existence and give himself to the “Living Water” in hopes that these waters can extinguish the flames of perdition. The journey of self-discovery and the decision to unburden oneself by embracing the peace that passes understanding and surrendering to the hand of fate. Throughout the poem, the reader is forced to bear witness to the fall from faith, the loss of hope, and the struggle to hold onto something. The intangibility of salvation, the seeming futility of life and an overwhelming sense of disillusionment is juxtaposed by an innate desire to survive and thrive in spite of them. The cold and barren waste land seems completely lost to all who inhabit the unseen city and yet the fragments, the souvenirs, these last remnants serve as artifacts, as