Hanging in a Jar

Hanging in a Jar When read for the first time, The Waste Land appears to be a concoction of sorts, a disjointed poem. Lines are written in different languages, narrators change, and the scenes seem disconnected, except for the repeated references to the desert and death. When read over again, however, the pieces become coherent. The Waste Land is categorized as a poem, but when exhibited visually, it appears to be a literary collage. And …

…the end of the poem. They can either forget about the poem, returning to the wasteland, or they can stop repressing pain and feeling, thereby escaping. Eliot ends the poem with a man sitting on a shore, "[f]ishing, with the arid plain behind me" and asking, "Shall I at least set my lands in order?" (425-26). The man here, by facing his pain, has left the waste land, and is able to move ahead.