The Waste land -T.S. Eliot What is Eliot’s vision of the world as expressed in “The Waste Land”. Or Write a note on the Eliot Zone of consciousness.

Thomas Stearns Eliot, a great critic of modern life, Eliot takes up the predicament of modern man, the futility and misery of modern existence. As Eliot is considered the representative poet of the age, a study of the socio-political, intellectual and economic cross-currents of the age is necessary to understand his vision of the world.

The poem, “the Waste Land” was written in 1922 when the world, at least Europe, was laid waste by the devastating first world war. The shadow of the coming second world war was hanging upon the brow of man. In the wake of war, the established Victorian society based on material prosperity, social security and strict moral and religious values gradually broke down. A sense of despair and pessimism possessed the people of all ranks as the outcome of the decay of the established social order. Poverty spread all over the country and people became the victims of the wide-spread immoral practices. In actual sense, Europe became a waste land with no hope of regeneration. Eliot drew the picture of such a society in his poem.

Eliot expresses the chaos and disillusionment of modern life by his peculiar technique and the images of the metro-Politian life. He presents a certain paltriness in contemporary man. No one can more readily call up the dreary association of fifth and fog common to all. He brought into poetry something which in this generation now needed. He has done more than any other living English poet to make this age conscious of itself.