The Waste Land as a comic book

One page from the comic book

Who would have imagined that T S Eliot’s convoluted poem, The Waste Land, would one day be a comic book? I was fascinated when I came to know about it from an article in Open Culture. The sample pages reproduced in the article look charming too.

My first association with The Waste Land was as a postgraduate student of English literature. The imageries and motifs of the poem caught my fancy. But I’m not sure I understood its deep intricacies. The sluggish resistance to life in the opening lines shakes your very roots, “stirring dull roots with spring rain.” We don’t want to be reborn. We are happy with our hibernation. It’s a sort of spiritual hibernation. We need a reawakening. That’s what the poem is leading you to.

Eliot was shaken by the disillusionment that descended on the world after the World War I. There was untold devastation which went on to exert profound impact on society, culture, and art. The war shattered the belief in progress, rationality, and the values of the 19^th century. A sense of despair and hopelessness prevailed now. The cultural and spiritual vacuum prompted Eliot to explore themes of decay, fragmentation, and the loss of meaning. The Waste Land was the result.

The poem is divided into five sections. The motif of death and rebirth foreshadows the disillusionment and decay that will make their presence throughout the poem. There is a spiritual drought for which people seek shortcut solutions like Tarot cards. The ancient grandeur makes its appearance now and then in such forms as Cleopatra’s burnished throne only to highlight the contrast between the genuine commitments of the past and the emptiness of the present relationships.

The need for a spiritual revival is accentuated in the middle section of the poem bringing Lord Buddha and Saint Augustine into it. The title of the third section is ‘The Fire Sermon.’ Lord Buddha delivered that sermon in which the senses and the world are mentioned as being ‘on fire’ with desire, greed, hatred, and ignorance. We need to rise above these passions through detachment and renunciation. Saint Augustine’s answer to the fires that burned within him was to seek the redeeming grace of his God, Jesus. His heart was restless until it found its rest in Jesus. Divine grace or renunciation.

We need to dive into that ocean of grace or renunciation in order to redeem ourselves from the fragmentation, superficiality, and disillusionments of the present. We need to die, metaphorically. Spiritually, if you prefer.

The poem ends on a note of hope taking a message from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The gods, the humans, and the demons approach Prajapati, the creator god seeking a lesson on how to live virtuously. Prajapati’s answer is Da which is interpreted variously by each of the groups as:

1.     Datta [give]: be charitable and selfless.

2.     Dayadhvam: be compassionate

3.     Damyata: control yourself

Magnanimity, compassion and self-control are Eliot’s prescription for human salvation.

We have come a whole century from the writing of The Waste Land. The world is entirely different today from what it was back then in 1921 when Eliot wrote this poem. I wonder what Eliot will exhort the people today.

It is good, anyway, that somebody thought of bringing this poem back to today’s generation in the form of a comic book, though there is nothing comic about it at all. Maybe Madame Sosostris will entertain today’s young readers with her “wicked pack of cards.”  

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