T.S. Eliot's Genre, Writing Style, Issues and Their Relevance Today

T.S.
Eliot's Genre, Writing Style, Issues and Their Relevance Today

World War I brought about a revolution in the art of poetry. T.S. Eliot was one of the Initiators of the
modernist revolution. Writing mostly poetry and plays, he introduced a new style of writing utilizing both
common speech of the time and very obscure allusions. Eliot was a pioneer of the modernist revolution, using
obscue allusions which were hard for the common people to follow. (Through his difficult first marriage, he
was able to fuel some of his powerful writings, such as "The Waste Land." His works involved a complicated
style, allusions being the common element. He wrote about things that concerned him, specifically having to do
with the post-war attitudes many people had. He wrote about death, loss, and spiritual recovery which for the
most part are still of concern today.)
Eliot was born Thomas Stearns Eliot in St. Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888. His parents were
Henry Ware Eliot, a businessman, and his wife Charlotte Chauncey Stearns, a poet. He was well educated,
attending Harvard, the Sorbonne at Oxford, and Merton College. He entered Harvard in 1906, and studied
philosophy in graduate school. He also became editor of The Harvard Associate. He went on to study French at
the Sorbonne, then back to Harvard to study metaphysics, logic,philosophy, psychology, and Sanskrit. He also
studied Greek philosophy and German at Merton. He went on to teach at Highgate near London where he taught
French, Latin, lower math, drawing, swimming, geography, history, and baseball. Once again he returned to
Harvard this time to teach, along with many other teaching jobs. Then he became a banker, registered for the
U.S. Navy, then became director for The Egoist. In 1915, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood. 1922 brought "The
Waste Land," his most famous poem, which is believed to have been the story of his marriage to Vivienne. He
became editor for The Criterion, where he introduced the works of W. H. Auden in 1923. He was fascinated
with the English culture, especially the dark side of their upper middle class. He wanted to leave his American
past behind him, and thus he became a legal subject of England and converted to the Anglican Church. In 1938
his marriage to Vivienne ended tragically, when he sent her to a mental hospital for 9 years. She died there, not
having seen or spoken to Eliot in 12 years. He re-married 19 years later to Valerie Fletcher, who was his private
secretary. Throughout his life, his writings received many awards such as the Nobel Prize, the Hanseatic Goethe
Prize, and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Eliot had a very unique style. He was a very knowledgeable man who knew much of literature. His
writing style involved many allusions which were hard for the average man to follow. This kept his popularity
at the beginning of his writing career to be low. To fully understand and appreciate his poetry, one must do
research or have footnotes, for he uses obscure allusions. In this, he educates and makes people work and think
to understand his complicated works, which were commonplace to him. His use of allusion allows him to
capture feeling through the previous works, making his works concise and simple, yet so complicated and deep
as to discourage the reader. The problem with his voice was it being above the understanding of his readers.
When one analyzes his work, one can see how intricate they are. The only way to fully understand his works is
to analyze them thoroughly.
"The Hollow Men" uses many allusions; from The Lord's Prayer, to The Heart of Darkness by Joseph
Conrad, to the English customs of Guy Fawkes Day. Guy Fawkes Day, on November 5, commemorates
stopping Guy Fawkes and his cohort's attempts to blow up both Houses of Parliament. It can be difficult for the
reader to discover such things as these and then the meaning still must be deciphered. He begins the poem with
an allusion to The Heart of Darkness speaking of Kurtz, a trader with no strengths and thus he becomes barbaric
in the central African jungle. He later refers to Kurtz as a violent soul, which is opposite of the hollow men. The
hollow men refer to all people. People have a lack of spiritual passion. They have no motivation, towards good
or evil, as Kurtz is a man who becomes rash and commits great acts of evil. This brings the reader, once he
understands the opening, to be intrigued as to how this relates to hollow men.
While Eliot has concise sentences, they aren't that clear. This is because of the complexity of his works.
While his grammar is smooth, the messages are often over the reader's head. This being attributed to his
allusions and them having their own meaning. All of the allusions wrapped together produce a whole new
meaning, which is the wonder of his work. Through his intervention and usage of allusions, he is able to contort
all of them put together into a new message, usually completely different than the references.
Brevity is a problem he has. While it is for emphasis, he is very repetitive, sometimes repeating the same
line over and over, consecutively or sometimes restates them multiple times. In doing this, he is able to stir
images in the reader's head. Using new wording for a similar line invokes further images. He is able to reveal
emotions by invoking them in us, rather than bluntly stating them.
Through his allusions, he gives fresh comparisons. Rather than using plain comparisons, he compares
his ideas with those presented in previous works by other authors. This, once the other work is understood,
sheds great light on his point. His comparisons are almost always new to the ear, thus appealing and intriguing.
If one can take the time to understand the allusion it keeps their attention almost glued to the words. On the
other hand, this can also thwart one from continuing reading or at least finding out the meaning because of the
time and effort involved. His poems have so much to say which can regrettably be lost in one's lack of
knowledge of literature.
Another aspect, both appealing to the eye, ear, and mind is his sentence usage and placement. In his
poems, he will have strangely placed sentences on a line, choppy sentences that continue on the next line with
strange breaks, and their lengths are not uniform. This can seem strange, especially to the non-enthusiast, but
provides differentiation to normal, uniform poems. This uniqueness makes for interesting poems.
Eliot always put flair in his poems. He knew so much of literature and also researched it, looking for the
right piece to illustrate his point. This gives the reader a chance to explore the entire poem. A reader can see the
time put into his poems simply through this, and the reader also has to put time into understanding them.
In the end of his works, he takes everything from the work and wraps it up in a simple statement. This
makes it beautiful, and once understood slightly, incredibly easy to fully grasp. While some writers pull some
things together from their work, he is able to, in some way, bring it all together. This is a feat not easily done, as
it can be hard to relate so many things, especially as complicated and deep as Eliot makes them. Being able to
utilize so many sources in his works and his language and sentence usage gives him a one-of-a-kind style, not
matched by many others.

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Eliot's Genre, Writing Style, Issues and Their Relevance Today

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