Isolation from Urbanization in The Waste land Anonymous

T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land depicts a modern society engulfed in absolute chaos and plagued by the complications of industrialization. Image clusters from the poem vividly describe littered streets overcrowded with people, while the text itself reads abruptly and harshly. Thus, Eliot's poem strongly suggests that the negative effects of industrialization and urbanization vastly outweigh the benefits. Eliot's fragmented language and discontinuous images reflect the ways in which an urbanized society circumscribes the individual's ability to communicate with others in that society.

One striking feature of Eliot's poem is the point of view from which it is told. The Waste Land contains no one single central speaker, creating a sense of disarray. Despite this, the poem reads like the interior dramatic monologue of a modern society. Eliot writes, "Unreal City,/ Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/ A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many" (Lines 60-63). The fact that the poem is not told from one specific point of view reflects the sense of disconnection Eliot is trying to portray. Here Eliot is juxtaposing different ideas, all of which, such as the...