Water, Water Everywhere

One of the images that stands out the most in The Waste Land is water - the lack thereof, the overabundance thereof, and even just as a backdrop to other scenes. If one were to pick out a single image that unites the many disparate pieces of The Waste Land, it would have to be water.

At the very beginning of the poem, water appears as the rain in April, the cruellest month. As discussed in class, Eliot approaches images of death breeding new life with disgust rather than hope, implying that water's life-giving power should not be used to to "[breed] lilacs out of the dead land" or "[stir] dull roots with spring rain." Already, the attitude of Eliot's speaker is complicated; water is passingly mentioned as a bringer of life, but the speaker clearly thinks that bringing life amid death is 'cruel.'

Section III begins with another piece of complicated imagery that includes water. The speaker describes "[wind crossing] the brown land, unheard," and notes several times that "the nymphs are departed," lamenting the decayed state of nature. This scene on the bank of the "Sweet Thames" seems to regard even a lack of pollution as a negative thing; "The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,/Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends,/Or other testimony of summer nights." It seems that, to the speaker, even trash by the riverside would be positive because it would indicate the presence of life. Without this evidence, the river runs on through the "brown land," with nobody stopping to enjoy it. In this post-apocalyptic scene, water seems 'cruel' because it persists among the destruction, reminding the speaker of what life used to be here.

Perhaps the most interesting combination of attitudes toward water appears in section IV and on into the beginning of section V. Picking up from where section I warned "fear death by water," section IV describes (and is titled after) exactly that, depicting Phlebas being picked clean by the sea and warning "you who turn the wheel and look windward" to consider this image. Here, the sea - water in abundance - is terrifying and powerful. In section V, there is "no water but only rock," immediately bringing the reader to just the opposite of section IV. The speaker here describes the lack of water as being so desperate that "one cannot stop or think," before descending into a flowing series of images of what it could be like if only there were water. "But there is no water." In section IV, water is cruel in abundance. In section V, water is cruel in its absence. Again, Eliot combines opposite images into an overall experience that is both confusing and horrifying.

Finally, at the end of the poem, the fisher king "[sits] upon the shore/Fishing, with the arid plain behind [him]," wondering "Shall I at least set my lands in order?" Water appears here at the end of The Waste Land as a backdrop to the fisher king's failed grail quest, there to give the king comfort even as he sits at the edge of a wasteland. The attitude of section III seems to come back in some measure, as the water shows evidence of life, but the life that is here is pathetic, impotent - a failure. The poem almost comes full circle as the water, which should by all means be a positive symbol, appears in this final scene to be very cruel.