Saturday, February 4, 2017
The Four Seasons
The juxtaposition that Eliot so frequently uses in The Waste Land is also evident in his depictions of the sea sons. He begins the work by saying that April is the cruelest month, and then talks about positive memories of winter. Normally, we see April as a symbol for happy times and for life, and we see winter as death, but Eliot does the opposite of this. Memory has a big role in this depiction. According to Eliot, winter is able to make people forget about the bad memories of the past, but the past is uncovered when spring comes around and the snow melts. This also has to do with the speaker of this stanza, because she fears her past.
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I agree with Joseph's statements. I think Eliot portrays April in a fascinating way. we think of it as happy, but Eliot makes it seem sad. In winter, everything is frozen, like our memories. We are able to live happily without remembering the painful past. In spring, those memories come alive and we are in pain again.
I think Eliot does this in order to further the point of using Marie in his story. Marie is a person who suffered all these painful memories of loss an while winter numbed her April jus brought these things back to light. The use of seasons is essential for us understanding the character of Marie. Memory and the last play a crucial role in this whole cycle of remembering an becoming numb again. The circle of life plays the opposite role because Marie thinks this time usually associated with new life is bad while winter is good in her mind.
I think that it is interesting how the snow keeps her warm. The cold of winter has a numbing effect and she doesn't remember all the painful memories. Humans do this a lot where we just block things out and try to be numb. This relates back to not being dead or alive just stuck in the middle. You aren't feeling anything. Just going through the motions.
The spring also brings new things. For example, Elliot mentiones hyacinths. Hyacinths are a flower which obviously grow in the spring. The hyacinth is a flower which is named after the God hyacinth who was the lover of the God Apollo. He died after trying to impress the god he loved. The flower is said to grow from the blood of the god. This could be a reference to how spring brings renewal and new live, but it eventually dies in the end.
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