The Waste Land
What is the mood of "A Game of Chess" by T.S. Eliot?
Poem: The Waste Land
Section II: A Game of Chess
Poem: The Waste Land
Section II: A Game of Chess
The mood is sad and filled with futility. This section once again ushers in the issue of biographical interpretation. It is tempting to read the woman on the “burnished throne” as Eliot’s wife, Vivienne; the passage then becomes a dissection of an estranged relationship. Some of the details point to failed romance or failed marriage: the “golden Cupidon” who must hide “his eyes behind his wing,” the depiction of Philomela’s rape –- an example of love cascading into brutality and violence -– and even the woman’s “strange synthetic perfumes” drowning “the sense in odours.”