Finding Inspiration!!

[spaczek_27]

After about a good half -hour of trying to read the poems presented in “The Wasteland” I found it extremely difficult to become interested in them, let alone finding something to write about. At the beginning of each attempt I would find myself intrigued with the rhyming scheme often employed by Eliot through out these specific pieces of work but

Comments

Empathy

[pitchgreen]

Of maybe your drifting mind empathized with the drifting phoenician and was able to relate. I would just make a reference to the first part of the poem with Madame Sosostrice,

"With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)"

Re: Empathy

[pitchgreen]

...which relates to your point about this being a sea poem.

carpe diem

[mysteryofgod]

I think that this section of the poem could relate to one of Shakespeare's sonnets where he suggests that the person he is addressing reproduces. This poem is a sort of carpe diem poem. It is a warning to people as well as a sieze the day message.

Caution indeed.

[nareesas]

This poem is more than a warning to those at sea. I think the speaker warns us all because Phlebas could be anyone. He might have been what we call "too young to die" but nevertheless, he died. He put his life in a risky situation by going out to sea but don't we all take risks just by crossing the street everyday? In death, the "profit and loss" of life is meaningless. We have some control over our lives however because after all, aren't we the ones behind the wheel? What we do with our lives before we die is what is important. This poem seems to be warning against being consumed in one thing or the other. The sea consumed Phlebas and slowly striped the meat from his bones but the sea was his way of life.