Cubism and Multiplicity of Narration in the Waste Land

Cubism and Multiplicity of Narration in The Waste Land Abstract The aim of this essay is to consider the multiplicity of narration in The Waste Land and its relationship in enrichment of content and meaning in the poem. There is an attempt to convey the Cubist traits and find concrete examples in the poem. This study will try to specify evidences for conformity of cubism and multiplicity of narration in the poem. While Eliot juxtaposed so many perspectives in seemingly set of disjointed images, there is â€Å"painful task of unifying .., jarring and incompatible perspectivesâ€Å" in The Waste Land. Like a cubist painting, there is a kind of variety of narration in unity through the poem. The usage of different languages and narrations in the poem†¦show more content†¦Part of this sense of the totality of the modern self adding up to a fractured variety emerges, not just from the shifting sense of the images and the multiplicity of narration , but also from the variety in the verse style. Its as if in the modern age, there cannot be a single authoritative way of expressing how one feels. There is not enough confidence in the forms of language itself. Just as the traditional community has become the unreal city, a vision of a modern inferno. So The Waste Land is abundant with multiplicity of narration in different language and set of seemingly disordered images. The images in The Waste Land are supported by two distinct ways of narration. The lyric voice opening the poem uses metaphoric, often symbolic images and speaks in repetitive, stylized syntax. It has suggested on the one hand order and propriety, and on the other hand stasis. This voice speaks with authority and finality as it recurs in scenes throughout the poem where the vision of barrenness and revulsion from life is intensely clear and controlled. This voice contrasts with many voices speaking in metonymically rendered narrative scenes full of movement and change. These other voices resist categorization. These voices rang from vivid characters such as Marie, the hyacinth girl, Stetson’s friend, Madame Sosostris, the nervous woman, the pub woman, Tiresias, and the Thames daughters,