PORTRAYAL OF LOVE IN THE WASTE LAND

T.S Eliot managed to present the sick love of the modern world in the Waste Land through the
notion of sex, and its abuse as a measuring stick for how morally demolished the society is.
T.S Eliot doesn't solely point out sex, but also the separation of love from sex. For him, sex is
potentially beautiful thing, but in the modern times, this beauty has been completely stripped
of its significance, mostly because the act of sex no longer has anything to do with love. This
observation of love and sex pretty much still holds true for much of pop culture today.

T.S Eliot wanted to offer the unholy representation of sex as an indicative of wasteland. From
the very beginning of the poem, he implies that people are confusing physical and emotional
roles of sex, and invites us to watch people turn this beautiful and sacred act of love- making
into a mindless, loveless source of exploitation, abuse and even murder. In the Game of
Chess, Eliot depicts the issue of gender relations, battle of sexes and the failure of love and
marriages in the early 20TH century. Love has gone wrong and the modern people are no
longer able to establish functional relationships; love, instead cooperation became a
competition. People started entering marriages because of material gain more and less because
of true and profound love; they became estranged and alienated not only from their
workplaces, but also from the closest people and lovers.

Cleopatra in this part might actually stand for the very abuse of love and sex. We can almost
consider her forced and raped, especially when Eliot inserts Philomel’s tragic story as a hint.
Cleopatra is surrounded by paintings from the past, yet doesn’t seem to be aware of those
images. Philomela was raped by Tereus who then cuts her tongue, and the intertwining of
these stories of past with the woman in the present, allegedly representing Cleopatra
demonstrates the relation between genders in the modern world. They nowadays include
violence, not necessarily rape, but any kind of abuse of love and sex. The couple “Cleopatra
and Anthony” depict this loveless relationship, the man’s reserved and arrogant answers to his
woman’s whining suggests that he is bored with their relationship and that they are literally in
the wasteland. The next part of this section portrays a friend of Lil’s talking to a 3 RD person,
gossiping about women’s situation, contraception, abortion, all set in a bar interrupted by
bartender. These women pretend to be good friends, as we see a woman advising Lil to make
herself more beautiful for her man, otherwise he’ll find another one. Love is being reduced to
a sexual act and only physical beauty is important. The woman clearly doesn’t want more
children and despite contraception, we’re still having an issue of unwanted pregnancy. There
is no space for romantic feelings. The last stanza introduces words of Ophelia just before
committing suicide, that might refer to Lil as another tragic female, a new Ophelia. Eliot
wants to depict the image of the whole society heading towards its suicide, because it doesn’t
want to change its habits (failure of communication, relationship between sexes, no love). No
matter which class is being represented, extremely wealthy Cleopatra, or the lower class
women in the pub; real, profound emotions seem to be lacking.