What the thunder said  dramatic section

The title refers to Upanishad, the sacred Hindu texts. The Lord of Creation speaks
Through the thunder and he gives 3 commandments of salvation:
1. Give
2. Symapthise/Agree
3. Control

First stanza:
The initial imagery associated with the apocalypse (at the opening of this section) is
taken from the Passion and the crucifixion of Christ. The gardens are the
Gethsemane gardens and the agony refers to Golgota (luogo dove fu crocifisso Gesù).
The Bible said that, after the crucifixion of Christ, there is a thunder and an
earthquake (=terremoto). It is the thunder of spring and it is connected to the
resurrection. But, THERE IS NO RESURRECTION HERE.
V328 it refers to Jesus
V329 it refers to the modern man. The modern man can’t die. He is dying (= è
morente) but he can’t die. We have to be patient because we will die at the end, but
with patience.

Second stanza:
There is a meaningless journey (= viaggio senza senso) in the desert;
This part describes the solitude and emptiness, the desert of the conscious through
hallucinations and obsessive repetitions (water, rock, stop, sand, drink). There is
NO PEACE, you can’t stop or sit in the desert, you have to continue the useless,
meaningless, repetitive journey. There isn’t silence and solitude (there are evil faces
in the mountains).
Everything is dry. It is the symbol of the lack of meaning and the lack of spirituality
in the modern world. There is only rock, not water. There is the sound of the thunder,
but it doesn’t rain.

Third stanza:
There isn’t water. The line is short because everything is dry, there isn’t life. The
sound of the water could be a consolation, but there isn’t the sound of water. The
grass (= erba) is dry and the wind passes though it. The narrating voice imagine a
place where birds are singing in the trees, but there aren’t birds or trees in the waste
land.
“drip drop” it is an onomatopoeia that refers to the sound of dropping
(=gocciolante) water.
The dryness (=siccità) and the lack of water come after (= vengono dopo) the
section “Death by water” (the fourth section). The fourth section is about a seaman
who drowns (= annega) and dies, so water doesn’t give life, it gives death. We should
fear death by water. Water doesn’t give life (also in the first section). We should not
desire to go back to life because we don’t suffer. The repetitive language and the
harsh imagery of this section suggests that the end could be near, but there won’t be
renewal (= rinnovamento) or survival (= sopravvivenza).

[There is an hallucination connected to the journey to Emmaus of the disciples of

Jesus. The disciples saw a third person who is hooded (= incappucciato); it was Jesus,
but they don’t recognise him. Eliot refers to this journey but he says that the took
inspiration from an expedition to Antarctica: they had hallucinations because they
were exhausted.
Then, there are hooded armies (= eserciti incappucciati).

The cities (Jerusalem, Athens, London, Vienna) are symbols of past and present
Eastern empires that have been destroyed, rebuilt and redestroyed. It reminds to
cyclical downfall of cultures. They seem unreal as London in the first section:
“Unreal” connects this section with the first section (“unreal city” London); there
are images and voices that connect different parts of “The waste land”.
The bats with baby faces refers to the Grail: the legend says that there are bats with
baby faces near the chapel of Jerusalem.
The empty chapel refers to the chapel of the legend of the Holy Grail (it contained
Jesus’ blood)
The are symbols: the empty chapel, the cock crow (it refers to the betrayal of Peter)
and onomatopoeia but this symbols are unusable here. The wind carries a thunder and
rain (maybe it symbolise the grace of God). The rain comes randomly and it gives life
to the land.

From the desert, Eliot talked about unreal cities, about the middle Age (Graal), then
about the chapel (Christianity) and finally about East (= Oriente). The Western cities
have been destroyed and Eliot looks for a meaning in the East. Ganga river is sacred
but here it is dry.
V399 The thunder spoke and it gives commandments in Sanskrit:
1. Give: what did we give? Nothing.
2. Symapthise/Agree: everyone think about his own prison.
3. Control: the modern man want to be controlled because his life is meaningless.
It announces the dictatorships (= regime dittatoriali) of the 20th century.]

Final stanza:
In this stanza there are 4 different languages, quotations from 6 or 7 different books
and different narrative voices.
Lines 424-425: The Fisher King is a symbol of fertility and he is fishing on the
shore (=riva). The king to his best to put in order what remains of his kingdom and he
will fail. This is a sign of imminent death or abdication.
Line 426: London Brigde is falling down  it is a song that children sing. London
bidge is the symbol of the British civilisation that is collapsing. The narrating voice is
the voice of children.
V427: Quotation of Dante (canto 26 of Purgatory): the fire purifies the souls from the
sin of lust (=purifica le anime dal peccato della lussuria). (v148 of canto 26).
V428: It is a latin poem that celebrates the return of the Spring and of Venus,
goddess of love and fertility (connection with the first section).
The latin phrase means “When shall I became like the swallow?” Swallow anticipates
spring and the poet asks himself when will he be a part of spring. Men are excluded
from spring and fertility.
V429: The Prince of Aquitaine has his towers in ruin; it comes from a sonnet by
Gerard de Nevalle, French poet who was mentally ill and cryptic (he never explained
his poems).
V430: Then, for the first time, there is the voice of Eliot: Eliot builds a dam against
the ruin using all these fragments (Fisher king, children’s song, Dante, latin poetry,
French poerty).
V431: Quotation from “Spanish tragedy” by Thomas Kyd (contemporary of
Shakespeare): Hieronymo is crazy because his son has been killed.
V432: 3 commandments of the Lord of Creation.
V433: conclusion of the Upanashad. “Shanti” means “peace”, it is similar to
“Amen”. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates it as “the peace which passes
understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.

The explosion of citations and allusions at the end of the section and of the entire
poem can be read as a final dissolution into a world of fragments and rubbish. The
king offers some consolation: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins,”. It
suggests that it will be possible to continue on despite the failed redemption.
It is important that the last words of the poem are in a non-Western language:
although the meaning of the words themselves communicates resignation (“peace
which passes understanding”), they invoke an alternative set of rules and meaning to
those of the Western world and, maybe, offer some hope for an alternative to our
dead world.

It is a meaningless journey in a dry desert and there are apocalyptic scenes
regarding Western civilisations (WWI too) and so the research goes to the East. But
even here there is chaos and the poet tries to build a dam with quotations, languages
and religions to protect himself from ruin.

Comparison between Eliot’s “Waste land” and Montale’s “Meriggiare

pallido e assorto”
1948 Nobel Eliot
1975 Nobel Montale

They both use objective correlative.

“Meriggiare pallido e assorto” is similar in tone and also in imagery to some parts of
“What the thunders said”, in particular lines 25-38 where Eliot describes a desert
dry, arid and the same land is described by Montale in this poetry. They both refer to
a desolate landscape, a waste land of the spirit and to dry, spiritual emptiness
( imagery of rocks, feeling of heat). It is the desert in Eliot the landscape of Liguria in
Montale. Same desert represents a spiritual waste land. Eliot is more cosmopolitan
(he refers to everywhere, every language) while Montale refers to the arid land of his
home, is more intimate setting.
In particular, in the final image of Montale’s poem we have an objective correlative:
“muro con dei cocci di bottiglia” the wall is an expression of the prison of the
human life which is dried up, it hasn’t any values. While (=mentre) in Leopardi, “la
siepe” referred to infinite space, this wall refers to the difficulty and suffering to get
over this wall. For Eliot, there is nothing beyond this wall.

Form
The final section of The Waste Land moves away from more typical poetic forms to
experiment with structures normally associated with religion and philosophy.
The reasoned, structured nature of the final stanzas comes as a relief after the
obsessively repetitive language and alliteration (“If there were water / And no rock /
If there were rock / And also water...”) of the apocalyptic opening.
There isn’t, or very little, punctuation. Massive use of free verse (no rhyme).
The reader’s relief at the shift in style mirrors the physical relief brought by the rain
midway through the section. Both formally and thematically, then, this final chapter
follows a pattern of obsession and resignation.