Turmoil and Uncertainty in Eliot's Poetry Ellie Peng 11th Grade

T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922) and “Burnt Norton” (1935) both discuss the modernist view of post-war Britain, one regarding London and the other using imagery from the country house of Burnt Norton, taking inspiration largely from Eliot’s own experiences of the destruction that the war brought into the lives of regular citizens. Eliot himself was noted to have said, “Out of the ruins of my marriage came the Waste Land”, invoking ideas regarding romance, sex & the breaking down of a relationship. “Burnt Norton” is the first in Eliot’s Four Quartets, a series of poetry that invokes strongly a sense of music, especially Jazz, a new genre of post-war music, inspired by a Cotswolds manor house that Eliot visited during 1934. The uncertainty that characterized the war and the subsequent years is clearly present within both of these poems, and by using time as a strong theme within “Burnt Norton” and “A Game of Chess” from “The Waste Land”, Eliot introduces the importance of living in the moment in a period of intense social, artistic & physical change. Language and its inadequacy are another idea that runs throughout Eliot’s poetry, emphasizing the complexity & enigmatic nature of humanity that was the popular...