A Qualitative Analysis of the Poem “The Waste Land” to Investigate Spiritual Sterility, Moral Degradation of the Post-war Modern People and the Path of Salvation

Abstract

This paper’s overriding concern is to analyze the moral degradation, spiritual sterility, fragmentation, damaged psyche of humanity, the disillusionment of early twentieth-century post-war modern Europe and of course the path of salvation that are enormously manifest in the Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’. In the question of regeneration or salvation, Eliot in this poem instructs the morally and spiritually sterile modern man to follow the Indian philosophy, Vedas and Upanishads, the storehouse of knowledge, relief, and source of spiritualism, redemption and salvation. And also he concludes the poem with the sense that if they practise them in their life as instructed, there will be nothing but Shantih, shantih, shantih (peace and tranquility) in their life. This paper thus attempts to dissect how the poem develops exerting the acute sense of spiritual infertility, moral degradation, sexual perversion, meaninglessness in the human relationship of the post-war-devastated and dysfunctional world and concludes with the instruction of the path of salvation.