Out of This Stony Rubbish: Echoes of Ezekiel in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Author

Luke J. Rapa, Grand Valley State University

Date Approved

2010

Graduate Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English (M.A.)

Degree Program

English

Abstract

This essay explores T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land in light of the poet-prophet connection—a connection which was of particular interest to T.S. Eliot himself. I argue that Eliot was aware of the poet-prophet connection early in his youth and that this awareness influenced and informed The Waste Land. I suggest also that Eliot takes up the themes and images of the biblical prophets, and of Ezekiel in particular, as a means to structure the poem, but more importantly, as one way of '‘controlling, or ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history"' (Eliot. '''Ulysses,' Order, and Myth," 177). Finally, I propose that Eliot himself, through The Waste Land, stands for readers as a poet-prophet, and thereby offers a way out of the desolation and despair that Eliot found to be so pervasive in the modern world.

Comments

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ScholarWorks Citation

Rapa, Luke J., "Out of This Stony Rubbish: Echoes of Ezekiel in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land" (2010). Masters Theses. 692.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/theses/692