Death, Water, and T.S. Eliot

Death, Water, and T.S. EliotT.S. Eliot is one of the leading poets in regards to symbolism. Water, one of his most reciprocal symbols is put together in both ?The admire numbers of J. Alfred Prufrock? and ?The Hippopotamus.? At the end of ?The Love Song? the narrator goes to the ?sea? and ? benevolent voices? cause man to ?drown.? This poem associates water with Earth and death. However, in ?The Hippopotamus,? the hippo is ? wash uped? and cleansed by water. This poem mocks the use of water to symbolize redemption and forgiveness. These are conflicting views that Eliot must rescue struggled with before his conversion to Christianity. Eliot also has reoccurring subjects throughout his texts. Death is found in both of these poems as well. T.S. Eliot fears death in ?The Love Song;? he sees it as disintegration and the decomposition of the world body. But, in ?The Hippopotamus? Eliot praises death as the hippo?s way of ?be[ing] washed as white as snow,? notwithstanding criticizes the death of the church by being abandoned on Earth. These poems were both written before Eliot became a Christian, ?The Love Song? before ?The Hippopotamus.? It is obvious in this latter poem that Eliot is saturnine towards the view of life after death associated with Christianity.



He is vexing the church and assuming it to false in its teaching and worth(predicate) of nothing more than being caught in the ?miasmal haze over? here on Earth.

Water, most commonly symbolizes renewal or redemption. It is meant as cleansing the body and soul or filth. race wash with water to get clean, same as they wash their souls to regain purity. Eliot uses water in a different sense. In ?The Love Song,? the character talks of the sea in the proceed two and a half stanzas. Mostly in his last...

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