Finding refrences to T.S. Poem.

[Kingfan100]

Where in the third book does he refrence to the poem, The Waste lands?

[Moderator]

It's immediately before the first chapter begins. That page also has an excerpt from Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" and Robert Aickman's "Hand in Glove".

[Kingfan100]

I speaking in the chapters them selves.

[Bryan James]

Probably when Blaine goes translucent and they have a view of the desolate landscape below? If that even happened (maybe I imagined that)...been a while.

~BJS

[Kingfan100]

I was aiming direct quotes and pages no. excluding the excert before the first chaper.

[Bryan James]

Sometimes you just have to do your own research for ultraspecific facts.

[Lencho_of_the_Apes]

I didn't notice any when I read the book... but I wasn't looking for them, so that only means that there was nothing so obvious it popped up off the page and slapped me.

If you do find any, please let us know about it, that's something I'd be really interested in finding out about. (One more thing to think about it when I go to re-read that one...)

We all float down here. Fear death by water.

[DancingCorpse]

I think when they go over and above the literal Wasteland on Blaine, that's pretty much expanding on Eliot's descriptions in that section of the poem, this part of the series basically builds up to this scene imo, like, this is what's become of the great old ones ('us') - i'd assume it relates to this, even if it is in another universe. So it fits well to use this particular poem. He might use some fragments of the poem here and there, it's quite possible, i'd probably be able to pick some out the next time i read the series through.

[smerdyakov]

I know in the book report, "fear in a handful of dust" is a quotation, but that's an epigraph to the book itself. I can't remember if it's this book or the stand, but he also uses "let us go then you and i when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table" verbatim (but that's prufrock, not the wasteland). I don't recall any other direct quotations, though. Maybe king's wasteland could loosely correlate with 'what the thunder said' -- at least in terms of setting (not really though because eliot's is in a desert), but not really content.

I think king borrows the name and not much else from eliot's poem.

That's all I got.

[DancingCorpse]

Yes, maybe he is kind of expanding on the dark themes throughout the poem as interpreting them as what man has done to make this 'wasteland' a harsh reality. So, obviously there will be plenty of subtle and not to subtle references to Eliot's poem and it's many levels.

[smerdyakov]

To be honest, I don't see any connections or expansion on themes from eliot's wasteland. Maybe the result of hypermodernity in Lud? But I don't think so -- that just seems like a stretch to find a connection that could (only very loosely) fit a theme from the poem. I don't think this is a bad thing; who'd want to read eliot's wasteland in prose form:eek2:

But what sort of interpretations or references did you have in mind, DancingCorpse? I'd be interested to hear because I can't recall any.

[Lencho_of_the_Apes]

I've come up with one, but it's pretty tenuous and it doesn't do anything to improve our understanding of the DT books beyond giving us a blinking moment of insignificant insight into what SK was thinking about when he plotted the series.

Eliot's The Wasteland drew a lot of ideas and imagery from the "Fisher-King" legends about a wounded, crippled King whose country goes barren because of his injury, drawing from the comparative-mythology studies of Jessie L. Weston in "From Ritual to Romance." The best-known example of Fisher-King mythology, according to all the sources, is the legend of King Arthur. Get it?


We all float down here.