Eliot’s use of myth and legend in The Waste Land

Answer

How does Eliot make a link between the past and the present in The Waste Land? 

Or,

Comment on T. S. Eliot’s use of myth in The Waste Land.

Or,

How does T. S. Eliot make a link between the past and present in The Waste Land?

Or,

How has the poet fused the past and the present in The Waste Land?

Or,

Comment on the use of myths in The Waste Land.

Or,

Discuss parallelism in The Waste Land.

T.S. Eliot’s (1888-1965) poem ‘The Waste Land’ (1922) is notable in modernist literature, conveying rich mythical references. Eliot accurately connects the past and present through these myths and legends from various cultures and allows them to connect with modern themes. We will examine various textual examples in this article to examine how Eliot created this union.

The Protagonist Tiresias: Tiresias exists in both the past and the present. He links King Oedipus’ desolation and modern civilization’s wasteland. He lived in Thebes during the reign of King Oedipus. He once witnessed two serpents mating. They cursed him and converted him into a lady. He saw another pair of snakes in copulation after seven years. He was imprecated and converted into a man as a result. As a result, he had a life of both a man and a woman. Later, Zeus and his wife Hera questioned whether a male is more passionate than a woman. He asserted that women are more passionate than men. Hera, the goddess of the underworld, plagued him with blindness.

Oedipus, King of Thebes, accidentally murdered his father and married his mother. God punished him and his land with a deadly disease and famine for his sex crime. Tiresias asked him to perform penance to purify his soul and remove the curse from the land. He is physically blind, yet he has a prophetic vision. He is a skilled observer of the modern wasteland. An excerpt about Tiresias is:

“And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan