Burial of the Dead Summary

            In the first four lines, the mystery narrator is telling the reader about how April is the cruelest month because the earth is trying to grow new plants in dead soil. He says that winter is the best month, which is kind of ironic because usually it’s associated with death, but “Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow…” as the narrator says. The think the speaker is saying it’s better to be numb and forgetful in your emotions and just survive on the small joys in life- as if they were “dried tubers” (a kind of potato). At this point in the poem, the speaker changes to a woman named Marie. She talks about a Hofgarten a couple miles south of Munich, Germany, and how she used to drink coffee and speak to a friend for hours there. She states in German that she is a “real German” suggesting that a real German can come from Lithuania, a controversial topic for the two places. Finally, she begins reminiscing about the joys of childhood and the freedom youth can bring. Aon the last line of the poem, she ends it on a sour note: I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” She could be referring to the constraint aging brings, and how she can’t sleep because of the aches and pains, and how she may go south in the winter, like some elderly couples do when they move to Florida.

            The very beginning lines of stanza two are a statement about society made by Eliot: how can we create historical roots in a time period where we can appreciate nothing during the pursuit of knowledge? The first half of the stanza is describing a desert, with red rock, a hot sun, and little to know water, water being a symbol for spirituality. The speaker at this point, no longer the woman from before, states that he will show the reader something different than the shadows he is normally associated with. This is a reference to the lack of good and evil in the poem, meaning there is no hope either way. The shadow striding behind a person could be a symbol of good, like a guardian having your back, and the shadow rising in front of you could represent evil, like a satanic force blocking your path. In the poem, they talk about a completely different shadow, one that isn’t associated with good or evil. After a passage in German, a new speaker arises, introducing herself only as the Hyacinth Girl. The hyacinth flower is a flower commonly placed on graves, which gives her speech a very creepy tone. She talks about a man she feel in love with, and about how when he returned from the Hyacinth garden, her eyes failed and she knew nothing. This is playing off the phrase “Love is Blind”, and the Heart of Light is a statement to the importance of love in the Wasteland they are living in.

            The speaker in the next stanza is talking about a clairvoyant woman, Sosostris. The speaker says that she is the wisest woman on Earth, even though she gets a bad cold every once in awhile, symbolizing the fragility among even the greatest of people. This could also be a statement about our society, and how even the most successful societies have flaws. Sosostris is reading the speaker’s fortune in this scene, and first she pulls the drowned Phoenician Sailor. The Phoenicians were a people who knew their way around a boat- so the cards support the whole “Even the greats’ can fall” theme in this stanza. In the next line, “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!” is an allusion to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” when she is describing how, if a person lies at the bottom of the sea for long enough, their eyes turn to pearls, and since eyes are the windows to the soul, it’s safe to assume that, like the pearls, the persons soul is hardened and dead as well. This supports the aforementioned theme, and an earlier theme about spiritual death; the soul is representing spirituality and society, and the lack there of represents the fall of both. The next card Sosostris pulls is “Belladona” or Beautiful Lady in Italian. “Belladona” isn’t a real tarot card, but the “Lady of Rocks” is, and Sosostris calls the card the lady of situations because she can be both beautiful and dangerous at the same time. Next, she pulls the man with three staves, or the three of wands, the wheel, which symbolizes rapid change, and a blank card that she cannot read. She also says that she cannot find the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is a card which symbolizes self-sacrifice to restore the lands fertility, and in the first stanza, the lands are infertile and cannot have anything planted in them. Sosostris is saying that she doesn’t see that changing in the future. The next line, “Fear death by water” is also interesting because the lack of water was a running thread in the beginning of stanza two. Does she mean drowning like the drowned Phoenician tarot card? Or by the lack of spiritual identity displayed by not having water to begin with?

The “Unreal City” is London, and this is an allusion to Charles Baudelaire, “Fleurs du Mal”. The city is “unreal” because of the looming smog hovering over the city and the zombie-like population. He says he “had never thought death had undone so many”, which is basically quoting Dante’s Inferno, and he uses this allusion to compare modern life to living in Hell, the unsatisfied people being used to represent the undead. While the crowed “flowed up the hill and down King William Street” the speaker says the bell at Saint Mary Woolnoth, a church, “kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.” T.S. Elliot keeps mentioning death along side religion to represent the death of appreciation toward culture in our modern society. In the next lines, the speaker then sees someone he knows in the crowd –Stetson- and asks him if the corpse he planted in his garden has begun to sprout. This is a reference to the infertility of the land, and how someone would have just as much luck planting a corpse as they would crops. One strange inconsistency in the poem is when the speaker asks his friend if the sudden frost has disturbed [the corpse’s] bed. Why would there be a frost in April? I think this is a mocking question because the speaker clearly thinks winter is better than spring. At the end, the speaker quotes Charles Baudelaire again. He says, You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable—mon frère!"  by calling his friend his “brother”, he is saying that he blames him, himself, and everybody around him for what has happened.