Gothic Elements in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land"

By: Nada al-Habardi

7E2

The term Gothic is derived from a medieval style of architecture

suggestive of a passionate and barbarous world, filled with evocative ruins

of abbeys and castles. The setting above all marked a departure from the

domestic fiction popularized by Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), and

although there are noteworthy continuities in the plots and themes --

sensitive heroines in distress being threatened with respect to their virtue and

even their lives -- the Gothic gave greater emphasis to the Sublime and the

supernatural.

The historical origins of Gothic writing in the eighteenth century are

simultaneously political and aesthetic. Rising along with the English novel

during the same decades that are the prelude to Romanticism, the Gothic in

its narrative form engages issues of beauty, the character of the sublime and

the grotesque, the political dynamics of British culture (especially with

regard to the kind of social change that comes to be represented by the

French Revolution), the quality of being English (including the holding of

anti-Catholic religious attitudes), the structure of the economy (especially

concerning property in a market economy and gift-exchange), and the place

of women in hierarchies of power. Stylistically, the Gothic has always been

excessive in its responses to conventions that foster the order and clarity of

realistic representations, conventions that embody a cultural insistence on

containment. The essentially anti-realistic character of Gothic writing from

the beginning creates in advance a compatibility with modernist writing.

That compatibility begins to take a visible merged form in the 1890s in

Britain. In the development of the Gothic after the French Revolution, the

characteristics and issues apparent in Gothic writing of the eighteenth

century carry forward into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but they

are significantly transformed, intensified, and disseminated by interactions

with national literatures and political events outside England. Eventually

they are affected by the historical development of modernity in wider than

national arenas, including colonial and postcolonial situations.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is a dark and gloomy view of a zombified

modern experience. In accordance with the tenets of representing the fear

seen in postmodernism, Eliot uses Gothic images to show the bleakness of

the modern world in all of its terror.

Post-modernism embodies a tone of the external world being

unrecognizable, and thus invoking fear within its concepts. It shares the idea

of Gothic literature portraying the terror of unknown monsters and demons,

but it is the modernity itself, which has become the demonized unknown

within the context of postmodernism. The poem's setting is a vision of the

Gothic terrain, with its "heap of broken images," "That corpse you planted

last year in your garden," "The wind under the door," "bones cast in a little

low dry garret,”.

There are several gothic elements which have an important dimension

in “The Waste Land,” one of which being the image of death. The concept

of death in Eliot’s masterpiece brings significance in its symbolic nature, not

necessarily purely physical. Eliot presented a spiritual and emotional death,

rather than purely emphasizing the physicality of the experience . Thus,

there are dead men walking. Those within the cities have died a “symbolic

death,” refusing to move on towards an area of more spiritual significance

They have died in a much more spiritually significant manner.

Moreover, there is the element of haunting that is common within

Gothic literature and is replayed in Eliot’s image of the world’s Metropolis

death. Haunting plays an important role within postmodernism and Eliot’s

work “The Waste Land.” He shows the dead men walking as haunting the

earth. Research suggests that “The terror of the Gothic therefore […]

functions as a deconstructive counter-narrative which presents the darker

side of subjectivity, the ghosts of otherness that haunt our fragile selves,”

The structure of the poem itself also helps portray Gothic imagery.

There is “Gothic imaginary at work on a number of different levels

supporting the theme of terror and linguistic frustration,” The introduction is

in Latin and Greek, which anchors the gothic themes of the past that is so far

removed from us. From there, Eliot consistently writes in fragmented words

and phrases which then represent the fragmented lives being lived within the

context of modernity. Thus, “the nightmare of fragmentation will

persistently haunt the ego as a recollection of its functionality,”

T.S Eliot, one of his horrific images in the poem ,will show you fear in

handful of dust ''in handful of dust'', is a fearful image that he will show the

reader that his life worth nothing. It may also remind them of their end.

Another example of the horrific images , (Those are pearls that were his

eyes. Look!) This is an image of ugliness and horror. It is horrific image of

white ball of the eye that is shining like the pearl in the bottom of the water.

''Look'' is an invitation to see the actual death, destruction and alienation of

the person. Nothing remains of him but a blank look in the eyes. It is a

fearful ugly horrific picture, and that images emphasis in the gothic

elements.

Reference :-Belville, Maria. “The Gothic-postmodernist ‘Waste Land’ of Ellowen

Deeowen: Salman Rushdie’s Nightmarish Visions of a Postmodern Metropolis.” Nebula. 4(1). 2007. Web. 30 Dec 2010. http://www.nobleworld.biz/images/Beville.pdf

- Frankenstein's Monster: The Gothic Voice in The Waste Land

by Randy Malamud - Introduction: Toward a History of Gothic and Modernism: Dark Modernity from Bram Stoker to Samuel Beckett by John Paul Riquelme

- Belville, Maria. Gothic-postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity. Rodopi Press. 2009