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During the years in which The Waste Land was written, T. S. Eliot had hard times with overwork at the bank, Vivien’s mental and physical illness, and his bleak future and severance from his family. Intellectually, Einstein’s theory of relativity changed the basic conception of time and space in his time. It was in the context of this personal and intellectual confusion that Eliot composed The Waste Land. In both science and philosophy, the crisis was related to radical uncertainty about the real world. This crisis was not only a cause of despair but also an incentive for innovation in arts. Artists of the early 20th century such as Joyce and Eliot responded by trying to find new ways of seeing and new models of knowing. In The Waste Land, Eliot employs several strategies with many literary allusions, the musical pattern, myth and the stream of consciousness technique. When the consciousness in the poem is made to dislocate or rearrange historical events, or especially to blend together scenes or incidents from literary allusions of different ages, it serves to universalize the context. Thus, The Waste Land became one of the most representative modern poems which reflect the culture and society of the 20th century, though he said it was a simply personal poem. The basic technique of the poem consists of literary juxtapositions which make this poem extremely difficult because of the numerous interruptions on the narrative level and because of the piled-up contrasts. In The Waste Land Eliot tried to say more than he could because he was at the stage of learning how to use language. He could not command words and rhythms in apprehensible ways. It is, however, a poem of not only an anguished personal revelation but also an austere cultural monument, reflecting and indicating the poet and the age. It is an unique and inimitable masterwork. It, however, did not establish a style.
