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Berrios 1 Bri Berrios Professor Gravendyk American Poetic Modernisms 5 November 2012 Loneliness as a Central Theme in A Game of Chess

Loneliness is a universal human emotion, captured by poets thousands, but explicitly expressed in every aspect in one section of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. In the first half of the section entitled, A Game of Chess Eliot incorporates loneliness in ways that no reader could have noticed on the first read through the section. Eliot does this mainly through his three characters, the narrator, the woman and the husband, all of whom are all extremely disconnected, lacking a place in Eliot's fictional setting. Hints at the theme of loneliness are references to famous characters, imagery, irony, syntax, sound and the choice of the speaker in the poem. The entire section of The Waste Land entitled A Game of Chess focuses on two opposing scenes: one of high society and one of a lower class. The first half of the section, which is the selection on which we focus, focuses on high society. The selection describes a wealthy woman sitting silently in an ornate room awaiting the arrival of her husband. When her husband arrives, she begins speaking in an erratic way, making demands and questions, and deteriorating to a point in which she makes very little sense at all. At the end of the selection, the woman regains her stability and decides that today she will play a game of chess. From the scene surrounding the woman, the reader feels that the woman is very isolated, which may have led to her irrational thoughts. The majority of the selection describes the setting of the woman from an outside perspective, but then switches into the erratic mind of the woman. The central character

Berrios 2 of the selection is the woman, though there are also characters of the husband and the narrator and the central theme of the selection is loneliness. A Game of Chess acquired its name from two separate works by the playwright, Thomas Middleton. One, also called A Game of Chess was a satirical depiction of the relations between Spain and Great Britain. The other, much more relevant reference was to Middleton's Jacobean tragedy Women Beware Women. In the tragedy, a married woman, Bianca, is seduced by a duke while her sister-in-law and mother-in-law are in another room, playing a game of chess. Each move in the game of chess is another step in the seduction of Bianca. For a foolish reason, Bianca is left alone and taken advantage of. Bianca's secret marriage is another part of her lone; because it is secret, there is no one who could help her. While the title of the section references the sub-theme of war, it also definitely contributes to the central theme of loneliness. One could argue that several themes of the selection are the central, most important theme, but the theme of loneliness is certainly the most significant. There are obvious connections to the selection and a theme of war, especially within the title. A game of chess is often a metaphor for war, and this is further supported by the fact that the title is a reference to a play about the shaky relations of two countries. More support comes from the fact that the husband in the selection may be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and from the simple fact that the poem was written only a few years after World War I. However, one must consider the fact that the first half of the section contains no references to war at all. It is simply a description of an ornate setting. Also, one must consider the fact that the central character in the selection is not the husband but the woman. Surely Eliot centered the section around the woman because he felt that she brought a more important message to the section. The theme of

Berrios 3 innocence as a central theme is a bit more difficult to oppose because it is certainly expressed through the woman. Towards the end of the long descriptive stanza, there are several references to Philomela and the nightingale, both explicit symbols of innocence. Also, the woman is represented a bit like a child; because the poem does not express the fact that the woman is intelligent, the audience can assume that she is very unknowing. The reference to the Garden of Eden when Eliot uses the phrase sylvan scene can also be expressed as a reference to innocence. However, all of these examples can be used as an expression of loneliness as well as innocence. In the story of Tereus and Philomela, Philomela was held captive and alone. The idea that the woman is a bit like a child could been seen as more complex; the woman is simply a person that no one can understand. Finally, the reference to the sylvan scene explicitly has nothing to do with innocence, and probably has more to do with the character of the narrator. The theme of rape is definitely prevalent, but also most certainly a sub-theme. In the story of Tereus and Philomela, Philomela is raped by Tereus. There is also a definite set-up of eroticism, what with the candles, perfume and cupid all mentioned in the room. The simple fact that the woman is waiting for her husband is a cue at something sensual. However, aside from the reference to Philomela, there is no hint to the fact that any sexual encounter that may occur is not consensual. While other sections of the poem definitely feature very prominent themes of rape, this selection surprisingly does not. In demoting the other themes to sub-themes, one must ask what makes the theme of loneliness a central theme? The answer lies in every sub-section analyzed within the selection. Eliot makes references to many famous characters including Satan in Paradise Lost, Ariel in The Tempest, Dido in Virgil's Aeneid, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, and most

Berrios 4 importantly, Philomela in the story of Philomela and Tereus in Ovid's Metamorphoses. If the narrator describes the view as a sylvan scene, just as Satan did in Paradise Lost, is the narrator supposed to be a representation of Satan? If that is the case, the narrator is the robber of innocence. The reference to Ariel's song in The Tempest is a reference to something earlier in the poem. In the first section, there was a mention of the tarot card The Drowning Man. In this section, it is the husband that makes the reference to the song when he thinks about the line Those pearls that were his eyes. In Ariel's song, this line was used to describe Ferdinand's drowned father. It seems that the husband makes the reference as a thought of suicide, which greatly supports the theme of loneliness. No one understands the husband's situation, so he seeks comfort in thinking about his eyes becoming pearls at the bottom of the sea. The reference to Cleopatra comes in the first line, when Eliot describes the woman as sitting on a burnished throne, which is the same description Shakespeare gave for Cleopatra's throne. Cleopatra is famed for her beauty beyond all others; perhaps the woman in the selection is at a level of beauty that no one can understand. In this circumstance, she is much like a queen, surrounded by ornaments, but with a situation with which no one can relate. The reference to Dido comes when Eliot describes the room in a way deliberately similar to how Virgil described a room in Aeneid. The connection between the woman and Dido is much the same as the connection between the woman and Cleopatra; who can relate to a queen? Once again, these references provide for very lonely circumstances for the characters in the first half of A Game of Chess. Like all modernist poets, Eliot does an excellent job of appealing to the senses, but unique to his style is the fact that the sensory images he included in this selection actually contribute to the central theme of loneliness. The selection starts with very ornate imagery; it is

Berrios 5 almost overly-detailed how the narrator describes the setting. However, all sense of setting is lost when the woman takes over the poem, and begins to speak. While it may seem like the ornate imagery was unnecessary, there are some key parts of the setting to note; the room is described as decorated with candles, perfumes and figurines of cupids all of which hint at some sort of sexual encounter. It is unsurprising that there may be some sexual encounter; the woman is waiting alone in her house for her husband. One very unusual use of imagery in the setting was the use of the word unguent to describe the perfumes. Unguents are not perfumes, but rather healing ointments, which makes the reader feel that rather than a sweet aroma, the room smells medicinal, much like a hospital. This brings up another question; is the woman both alone and ill? The description of the carving seems unnecessarily specific, but it actually features a great contribution to the central theme of loneliness; amongst the carvings is a single dolphin swimming in sad light. Within the first few lines, the selection also mentions a seven-branched candelabra, a reference which most readers might not catch at first read. A seven-branched candelabra is basically the same thing as a menorah, which a symbol for universal enlightenment. Is this enlightenment supposed to represent the woman or the narrator? It makes sense for the candelabra to represent the narrator who is an unknown, all-seeing being, completely unrelatable to the other characters in the poem. The two cupids are very important as they seem to represent the woman and her husband. One cupid is hiding behind his wings; this cupid is the husband, who does not relate to his wife and therefore does not speak to her and does not think she can understand his problems. The other cupid is peeking out; this is the wife, who asks questions over and over again, trying to connect with her husband, but is possibly too innocent to understand. While the cupids are next to each other, they are both very much alone.

Berrios 6 The entire selection is filled with very relevant examples of irony. The first would have to be the most obvious. While our central figure, the woman, has everything she could want in this house, she has no relationships that the audience can see, and no notable intelligence, and therefore really has nothing at all. The woman has this big, beautiful nest, but is deeply dissatisfied because she with all this ornateness and space, she is actually very lonely. Repeatedly full of irony, the woman is a contradiction in how she speaks. Feigning politeness, the woman makes demands, turns those demands into questions, and then makes demands again. This pattern of speak is ironic because it is as if she is trying to be polite with her questions, while she really wants to know the answers to her questions so badly that she could not care less about politeness. Because the woman is obviously not getting any answers, it is a lonely pattern of speech. Because the woman has this ornate house, the reader can also assume that the husband has a beautiful space with anything he can want. However, he is mentally stuck in the war, possibly hearing noises because he is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. No one, especially not his wife, can understand what the husband is going through, assuming that the poem is set in the time that it was written, post-World War I. It is also ironic that with this lovely home, and concerned wife, the husband is still having thoughts of suicide, as noted in his references to the drowned man. Perhaps the most ironic piece of the selection is the presence of the cupids. In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of affection, but within the relationship of the husband and the woman, the audience sees no affection. Instead, much like the statues, the reader finds two people being lonely together. Finally, with the underlying clues that chess is something menacing, possibly a reference to war, possibly a reference to rape, it is ironic that the woman chooses to play a game of chess at the end of the selection. Chess is also famed for being a game

Berrios 7 of strategy and intellect, but the woman is not portrayed as having intelligence anywhere in the poem. While the woman wants to play chess, it is unclear who she has to play chess with. Is the we referring to her husband, who is disconnected, and probably did not hear her, or is it another unknown person, perhaps the person that is supposed to knock on the door but has not? The examples of irony throughout the selection are fairly explicit, but their implications towards loneliness are not. In examining syntax, one examines less of the sentence structure and more of the order in which different characters' speech occurs. One can look at the arrangement of words and find that the narrator, the woman, and the husband have distinct voices that no one else in the poem seems to understands. The narrator writes in long, running sentences that feature many clauses and phrases as to express as many details as possible in a single sentence. Perhaps the best example is the narrator rant-like speech is within his description of the overly ornate room; one is not sure if narrator speaks again in this selection after description of the setting. Next, the reader notices that the woman's speech is set off by quotation marks. Her structure goes from command to question to command, which expresses that either no one can hear her or no one is listening. In between the wife's quotations, a part of the grammatical structure becomes unclear: Is the unquoted part of the selection the voice of narrator or the voice of the husband? Readers can assume that it is probably the voice of the husband only it is not spoken out-loud, rather in the husband's mind. Examining sentence structure and assuming these unquoted parts are the husband's thoughts, one notices that the husband's way of thinking is in brief complex sentences that end in dependent clauses. These thoughts are insightful; the reader can assume that the husband does not voice them because his badgering wife will not understand. Towards the end of

Berrios 8 the selection, the reader notices repetition of the phrase what shall as the woman contemplates what will happen next. Because of this repetition, the reader sees how important it is for the woman to have structure in her life. The woman is frantic and almost terrified of her uncertain future, despite how mundane this problem actually is. Two interesting parts of the syntax of the selection that are important to note: one is that the narrator most likely does not speak after describing the setting, and the other is how the first half of the selection is organized so much differently than the second half. Is the narrator's voice suddenly not important or is he simply choosing not to speak further. It is also interesting how distinct each of the speakers are and how none of them seem to relate to each other; in this way, even the syntax of the poem is a reference to the theme of loneliness. Looking at a poem's sound naturally includes examining its meter. Within the first part of the selection, one finds definite examples of iambs, and even a few examples of iambic pentameter. However, it is not a strict meter, breaks away into blank verse, even in the first stanza, which is also the most structured part of the selection. Generally, the selection lacks a rhyme scheme, with one exception at the end. If one examines sound beyond simple meter, one noticed that the selection features several turning points where the poem changes mood: when the woman speaks, when the husband thinks of the drowned man, when the woman decides what to do with her day. When the woman speaks, the mood changes drastically from elegant to frantic. When the husband thinks of the drowned man, the reader is dragged away from the frantic woman to the melancholy, depressing mood of the husband. When the woman decides what to do with her day, balance is maintained again, and the mood shifts back into something more controlled. While this has already been examined, it is important to note that the structure

Berrios 9 of the selection becomes more erratic as the woman becomes more unstable; one can notice how the disintegration of structure matches the disintegration of the woman's mental state. The woman repeats the syllables O O O O, but it is unclear whether she is referencing a song or simply making noises. The Shakespearian Rag is a nonsense song that is referenced; the title is misspelled by the woman, possibly as another example of her deteriorating mind. Last four lines are the exception previously mentioned; these lines rhyme because the woman has some return to stability. The sound of the poem is yet another deliberate expression of how no one, not even the reader understands the woman. Theme of loneliness is exemplified again through the repetition of the word nothing throughout this selection. Examining the choice of speaker brings up dozens of questions, some of which cannot be answered. First, the reader wonders who is describing the scene. Is it a concrete character or simply an all-seeing being? Most likely, it is the latter, because this narrator, and this section of The Waste Land is not referenced again in the long poem. We know that the narrator is not the husband because we hear him come down the stairs in the line footsteps shuffled on the stair. Now one must wonder why this narrator compares the woman to Cleopatra, Dido and Philomela? The three characters are all royalty, but does the narrator see the woman as a victim or a spoiled child because of her affluence? Because of the inconclusive ending to the selection, one can assume that the woman is more of a spoiled child than a victim. When the woman speaks, is she more calm or frantic? While the first sentence she states, My nerves are bad tonight. seems relatively calm, one looks at the content of that sentence and realizes that bad nerves seem like a sign of franticness. This is supported very well in the rest of the selection as the woman deteriorates and makes very little sense. But why is the woman so frantic? Is she

Berrios 10 dramatizing the situation? The reader can assume that the situation has something to do with a sexual encounter that the woman does not want, but the woman might simply be over-thinking her husband's desires. The husband seems to pay very little attention to the woman; her anxiety about a sexual encounter definitely seems dramatized. The fact that the husband pays almost no attention to his wife makes the reader further questions the sanity of the woman. Perhaps she is not speaking to her husband. Perhaps her husband is not there at all. However, if the husband is simply not responding, the reader must then ask how sane is the husband? Is he really suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome? It is possible that the husband is choosing to ignore his wife, but deeper mental issues as a result of the war could mean that he does not hear her at all. Another look at the choice of speaker comes from the confusion of whose quotations are whose; we cannot be sure whether it is the woman or the husband who is hearing noises, and therefore whether the husband is just as insane as his wife. Further example of the husband's possible mental issues come in the reference to Ariel's song; is the husband thinking of a lost comrade, or is he simply having thoughts of suicide? After the narrator stops speaking, it becomes unclear as to who is saying what. Does the narrator speak again at all? Does the husband speak out loud or does he simply think? Everyone in the selection is deliberately disconnected; no one can hear each other and no one can relate to each other, which makes the husband and the woman alone together. Eliot understands the complexity of loneliness; it is not necessarily to not be around any other people, but to not be understood by any other people. In every aspect of this selection, Eliot incorporated this theme. Within his references to famous characters, Eliot uses monarchs to whom no one can relate, much like his central character of the woman. Examining the imagery,

Berrios 11 Eliot secretly incorporates very lonely figures into the scenery of the ornate room. Each example of irony in the selection features an implicit reference to loneliness. Within the syntax, there distinction is created that makes even the sentence structure and word order relate to the central theme. The sound of the poem, specifically its mood and meter, greatly exemplify what is means to be alone. Finally, when one looks at the choice of speaker in each section of the poem, one notices what a depressingly unique being each speaker is. Simply reading the poem once or twice, one does not notice the central theme of loneliness, instead probably focusing on the subthemes that are actually far less relevant. However, in closely examining the selection, one notices the meticulous effort Eliot put into writing the theme into every aspect of the selection.

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