History Literature / TheWasteLand

* ShoutOut: It even ends with a massive list of all of its allusions, including Literature/TheBible, Creator/JohnWebster, Literature/ParadiseLost, Literature/TheDivineComedy, Creator/WilliamShakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Paul Verlaine, and Charles Baudelaire.

* WrittenSoundEffect: A few times, Eliot writes out birdsong with nonsense words -- "jug jug," "twit twit twit," "co co rico," etc. The penultimate line of the poem is "Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata," words which are both the sound of thunder and a meditative mantra in Sanskrit.

%%ZCE * AsTheGoodBookSays

* ShoutOut: It even ends with a massive list of all of its allusions.

* AsTheGoodBookSays

* NarrativePoem

* WorldOfSymbolism

* MindScrew: the poem never makes clear what exactly is going on, following a dream-like progression between scenes.

* DeadPersonConversation - With Stetson. Tiresias also mentions doing this during his career as a Hellenic mystic.

* MindScrew

Not to be confused with ''Literature/TheWastelands'', the third book in Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series. (Though the book makes open references to the poem.)

* WrittenSoundEffect "jug jug," "twit twit twit," "co co rico," etc.

* CityNoir: Unreal City

'''''The Waste Land''''' is Creator/TSEliot's most famous poem, as well as the most famous Modernist poem. It is mainly about how the world is hopelessly lost and how life cannot be regenerated. It is also [[MindScrew incredibly confusing.]] [[http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html Full text here]]

Not to be confused with ''Literature/TheWasteLands'', the third book in Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series. (Though the book makes open references to the poem.)

* PublicDomainCharacter: Tiresias and the Fisher King.

-->''April is the cruellest month, breeding\\

* SophisticatedAsHell: All these different linguistic registers in one poem.

* ViewersAreGeniuses: See "ShoutOut".

* IronicEcho: Some of the allusions, like all that nightingale business. Also some internal examples, like "death by water" and the "pearls that were his eyes".

* WorkingTitle: The working title was ''He Do The Police In Different Voices'', a ShoutOut to Creator/CharlesDickens, specifically ''Literature/OurMutualFriend'':
-->“[. . .] I ain't, you must know,” said Betty, “much of a hand at reading writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”

* AllThereInTheManual - Eliot's annotations. Except that [[TheWalrusWasPaul they just raise further questions.]]
* TheAnnotatedEdition - Provided by Eliot himself.

* ArcWords - "Unreal City," "fear death by water," and "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME," to name but a few.

* BilingualBonus - There are some lines that are in German, French, and Italian, and some Sanskrit words.

* BreadEggsMilkSquick - The narrator in the first "Unreal City" section talking to Stetson. "That corpse you planted last year in your garden..."

* BreakingTheFourthWall - When he calls out to the "hypocrite reader".

* CatchPhrase - HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.
* CityNoir - Unreal City
* CrapsackWorld - It is ''The Waste Land'' after all.

* EmotionlessGirl - The typist home at teatime.
* {{Expy}} - In his annotations, Eliot mentions the three Thames-daughters, who are expies of the Rhine-maidens from the ''Götterdämmerung''.

* {{Hermaphrodite}} - Tiresias.

* IntrepidMerchant - Phlebas the Phoenician and Mr. Eugenides, sort of.
* IronicEcho - Some of the allusions, like all that nightingale business. Also some internal examples, like "death by water" and the "pearls that were his eyes".

* LampshadeHanging - "The fragments I have shored against my ruins," at the end of the poem; referring to fragmented sentences he put before this line. Also, the second part of The Burial of the Dead mentions "a heap of broken images"-- like the poem itself.

* LiteraryAllusionTitle - Parts three and five are allusions to Buddhist works, and part one to the Book of Common Prayer.

* PublicDomainCharacter -Tiresias and the Fisher King.
* RuleOfThree - The three of staves is one of the tarot cards drawn, the Fisher King appears three times in the poem, there are the three Thames-daughters, the thunder strikes three times.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism - Way towards the cynical end.
** Though it can be argued that the cynicism is moderated, to an extent, by the ending stanzas of the last canto, What The Thunder Said, in which Eliot proposes three virtues (using one of the most famous sections of the Upanishads) - charity, mercy and self-control - as means of escaping the sterile Waste Land of modern civilization.
* SophisticatedAsHell - All these different linguistic registers in one poem.
* ShoutOut - It even ends with a massive list of all of its allusions.
* TarotMotifs - Specifically in the third vignette of part one. (Though some of the cards it mentions aren't actually in the Arcana. Eliot acknowledges this in the annotations, of course.)
* TheIngenue - The hyacinth girl, at first.

* ViewersAreGeniuses - See "ShoutOut".

* BreakingTheFourthWall - When he calls out to the "hypocrite reader" in GratuitousFrench.

* LyingCreator

* CreatorBreakdown - Both he and his wife suffered nervous breakdowns during the writing of this poem, hence it is no wonder it is so confusing.

* AllThereInTheManual - Eliot's annotations. Except that they just raise further questions.