Abstract:
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a poem that deals with the post war conditions of Europe after the First World War. Even though the poem
does not overtly appeal to the First World War, and a very few references are
made on the First World War (the pub scene), an underlying reading of the
poem proves that The Waste Land does have the First World war in its
background. What Eliot sees as the waste of modern civilization-spiritual
dryness, fruitless sex, illicit sexual affairs, sexual laxity, hopelessness, and
psychological and cultural deterioration cannot be restrained only to the
westerners of the twentieth century. It has resonance with all the post-war
communities and especially to Northern Sri Lankans who had experienced a
ferocious war for three decades. What this paper proposes is to relocate The
Waste Land in post-war Sri Lanka. In clear terms this paper perceives the
post war conditions of Sri Lanka from Eliot’s point of view, according to his
poem - The Waste Land. The comparative analysis of The Waste Land and
the post-war conditions of Sri Lanka: adopting the qualitative / descriptive
methodology, employed unstructured interviews with the counselors and
clients, informal data collection such as; collecting news from some reputed
news papers and gathering information from some informal discussions,
proves that the psychological deterioration that comes along with the war
remains irreparable in the war torn areas in Sri Lanka for a long time.
Winston Churchill’s claim “injuries were wrought to the structure of human
society which a century will not efface”, (Hughes, 1961, pp-39) also confirms
this idea. Further this paper attempts to create awareness to all about our
present plight–the spiritual cultural and psychological deterioration, in
which we all are facing a moral threat as well.
