The Waste Land | Part 2, A Game of Chess |

Summary
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Summary
The second section of The Waste Land begins with what appears to be a new scene: a woman sitting on a
chair that looks like a "burnished throne," which is given an elaborate and almost alluring description. The
speaker goes on to develop a very richly evocative picture of the woman's "jewels" and perfumes, and the
strange pattern that is created on the ceiling of the room. The scene is ornate—but also troubling, as these
sights and smells "confused / And drowned the sense in odours." The confused mixture of images and
references continues, as the speaker then describes the interior of this room, including artwork and
furniture, which reminds the speaker of scenes from Greek mythology. Footsteps are heard, hushed voices,
and then the striking image of this woman's hair aflame, forming into words.
Someone—perhaps the woman?—then begins to speak, describing how her "nerves are bad," asking
someone to speak with her and stay with her, asking a series of questions. These questions are given
ominous answers: "What are you thinking of?" is answered, "I think we are in rats' alley / Where the dead
men lost their bones." The "conversation" is a scattered and erratic one, and it becomes even more insistent
and erratic when the woman says she is preparing for a "knock upon the door." Before readers discover
who is expected, another conversation begins between the speaker and someone named Lil, whose husband
Albert had been in the war. The speaker warns Lil about taking care with her expenses and her looks,
including her teeth. This woman Lil has had many children by Albert and, as a result, has begun to age
before her time; she looks "antique," the speaker says. Lil responds that she's taken pills to have an
abortion, but is chastised by the speaker who asks her why she'd married at all if she didn't want children.
Finally, we discover, Albert arrives home. The speaker ends the poem with an appropriately eccentric
series of goodnights.

Analysis
Like the first part of the poem, Part 2 opens with a slower rhythm, reflecting the sensuous atmosphere of an
opulent lady's boudoir. Though less plodding than the poem's first six lines, such phrases as "confused /
And drowned the sense in odors" (lines 88–89), "ascended / In fattening the prolonged candle-flames" (90–
91), and "Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling" (93) strongly suggest a kind of languid boredom,
where the senses are dulled or intoxicated, life is slowed to an almost drowsy state, and even movement is
no faster than a mere "stirring."

Then, with the beginning of the dialogue in the second stanza of this part, the tone changes. A nervous,
chatty, and eccentric voice breaks through the boredom: "bad tonight. Yes, bad" (line 111). The repetition
throughout the sequence is not the slow sort, which lulls us into a trance, but rather it is unpredictable,
unhinged. The reader can almost feel someone plucking at their sleeve.

Readers are, like the Prufrock of Eliot's other famous poem, led to an "overwhelming question": what is it?
What are all these images for? The answer is ominous and unsettling: "I think we are in rats' alley / Where
the dead men lost their bones" (lines 115–16). The images are indeed a broken heap, signifying this place
of death, this place of no sound but wind, and of "Nothing again nothing" (120). A reflection of Eliot's
rhythmic verse, "nothing" is repeated several times in short succession, an echo of the nothingness of the
hyacinth garden scene in Part 1 (lines 38–41). This could very well be an imaginary conversation, or the
woman's conversation with herself—her fragmenting self—the terrible echo evidence of a malady, of
insanity. "Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. / "What are you thinking of? What thinking?
What? / "I never know what you are thinking. Think" (lines 112–14).

The reader may well ask who the speakers are in this sequence. And, for that matter, where does one
thought or voice end and another begin? The punctuation in Part 2 is itself ambiguous as there is no closing
quotation mark after the first line. Might this madness be a source of mysteries continually displayed but
unexplained? Some critics have suggested that this could be based on conversations between T.S. Eliot and
his wife Vivienne, though another interpretation is that readers are listening to a neurasthenic—T.S. Eliot
or an imagined patient. Here and elsewhere, nervous speaking is answered with ominous or bizarre
allusions—or with "nothing."
However, some critics have also suggested that this lady—herself part of an archetypal woman that appears
in much of Eliot's poetry—exemplifies the conflicted seductress/victim borne of modern alienation and
disconnection. Philomel, a figure from Greek mythology (line 99), is one such woman. Raped by Tereus of
Thrace, who, to protect his deceit, cuts out her tongue, Philomel uses her weaving skills to create an
embroidery that depicts Tereus's crimes. According to the ancient Roman poet Ovid's version of the story
in Metamorphses (8 CE), Philomel is later transformed by the gods into a nightingale. By evoking this
mythological figure, Eliot might be suggesting that art might have the capacity to heal, to transcend the
mutilation or those "withered stumps of time" (line 104). Despite the violence of time, the voice, the story,
can still be heard. Though women are abused, though they get no immediate answer to their questioning,
they keep the questioning up—an insistent interrogation that exposes the predations (spiritual and
physical/sexual) for others to see, just as Philomel wove her story for the queen in Ovid's rendering of the
tale. Eliot's "heap of broken images" gathers more and more significance. And as a result, more and more
unanswered questions emerge. But he offers hints.
The Arthurian quest motif, though more muted in this section, is at least implied. The Grail and its
associated mysteries had a tendency to appear and draw on its questing knights—only to suddenly
disappear, as though to keep the questing hero's object in sight. The woman in Part 2, whoever she may be,
is clearly a seeker, despite her frayed nerves. The hint is her many questions, which echo the interrogative
mode of those Grail knights, Galahad and Perceval. But who are the heroes and who are the villains? For
Eliot, they are one in the same; just as death exists within life, so, too, do evil and corruption exist within
beauty and growth. The source of this corruption does not come from the outside, from some external
force, but from within. The questing knight must battle himself. The Fisher King who needs healing
happens to also be the cause of that suffering since, as many sources note, his wound was self-inflicted.