Now I was ready to set up the final assignment. My students had known for six weeks that this was coming. I had prepared for them in the first week of the quarter a short description of the assignment. In it I had suggested that in his poem Eliot offered his vision of life and by implication also his creed. For their final essay—in prose of course not verse—my students were to do likewise. They would first describe their vision of life in this world and then state and explain their creed for living in it. For the first time in the quarter I revealed directly some of my own ideas about the meaning of The Waste Land.
“Eliot portrays a post-war civilization in ruins,” I wrote in the new handout describing in more detail their assignment, “a culture fragmented, wasted by war and death, inhabited by the superficial, the spiritually dead, banal, unthinking, unfeeling zombies neither dead nor alive who sleep, work, eat, drink, fuck, and kill without moral purpose, coherent belief, awareness, or meaning. Only by contrast does Eliot imply how he thinks people should behave in such a world—by generosity (datta), by sympathy (dayadhvam), and by discipline (damyata).”
I explained that one’s creed should derive logically from one’s vision of life. In support of each part of the final essay my students were to cite and document a minimum of two sources—two for vision, two for creed. Over the final weeks of the quarter, as students thought, wrote, hunted for relevant materials, and submitted drafts for my advice or approval, we discussed the project. In his poem Eliot suggests—among other things—that the earth is a manifestation of our collective human spirit and therefore—given our lust and violence—a waste land, that each individual life is a trial and a quest, and that the world one sees is a mirror of the mind. I suggested to my students that they too begin by considering metaphors of human experience. How did life seem to them, I wondered. Did they agree with Eliot? Was life a desert? Or a garden? A jungle? A fun house? A freak show? A party? An acid trip?
“It’s a rat race!” one young man declared. Several of his classmates nodded vigorously in agreement.
“And what are we rats racing for?” I asked. Several hands shot up.
“Survival!”
“Money!”
“Power!”
“Domination!”
“And what are the characteristics of rats?” I demanded.
.......................................
WASTE to be continued
“Eliot portrays a post-war civilization in ruins,” I wrote in the new handout describing in more detail their assignment, “a culture fragmented, wasted by war and death, inhabited by the superficial, the spiritually dead, banal, unthinking, unfeeling zombies neither dead nor alive who sleep, work, eat, drink, fuck, and kill without moral purpose, coherent belief, awareness, or meaning. Only by contrast does Eliot imply how he thinks people should behave in such a world—by generosity (datta), by sympathy (dayadhvam), and by discipline (damyata).”
I explained that one’s creed should derive logically from one’s vision of life. In support of each part of the final essay my students were to cite and document a minimum of two sources—two for vision, two for creed. Over the final weeks of the quarter, as students thought, wrote, hunted for relevant materials, and submitted drafts for my advice or approval, we discussed the project. In his poem Eliot suggests—among other things—that the earth is a manifestation of our collective human spirit and therefore—given our lust and violence—a waste land, that each individual life is a trial and a quest, and that the world one sees is a mirror of the mind. I suggested to my students that they too begin by considering metaphors of human experience. How did life seem to them, I wondered. Did they agree with Eliot? Was life a desert? Or a garden? A jungle? A fun house? A freak show? A party? An acid trip?
“It’s a rat race!” one young man declared. Several of his classmates nodded vigorously in agreement.
“And what are we rats racing for?” I asked. Several hands shot up.
“Survival!”
“Money!”
“Power!”
“Domination!”
“And what are the characteristics of rats?” I demanded.
.......................................
WASTE to be continued
