TS Eliot's Wasteland

8 Pages 1909 Words

In “The Waste Land” Eliot suggests that a man can be reborn if he gives, sympathizes, and has self-control. There are many characters within American Literature that could have benefited from this advice. Characters such as Amanda Wingfield , the personas in “Home Burial,” and Daisy Miller exemplify people, that if this advice was readily accessible, could have understood circumstances and could have been figuratively been reborn. In the previously noted characters lives, they let either society or their own regression take over instead of their own self-assurance and capabilities to empathize with others. By taking the advice with a grain of salt they would have been more prepared for the situations that made their lives tumultuous. However there are characters in literature that are the personification of this advice. The character Huck Finn is the personification that by giving, sympathizing, and demonstrating self-control one may be reborn. By his abilities to do all of the previously mentioned actions he went through an initiation story of him growing into a kind and capable man. Amanda Wingfield, the personas within “Home Burial,” and Daisy Miller are the antithesis of the above advice, while Huck Finn is its exemplification. By learning to give, sympathize, and demonstrate self-control, the characters afore mentioned would have, or have already, furthered their actions and outcomes greatly.
Amanda Wingfield, a deserted wife and the mother of Laura and Tom, is the protagonist of the play “The Glass Menagerie.” She is to be pitied, for she lives in a world of dreams and illusions. She has preconceived ideas about what is right for her son and daughter and tries to make her dreams for them come true; she wants Tom and Laura to bring her the happiness that her husband failed to give her. She does this by not giving her daughter the sympathy needed to nurture Laura with her handicap, by refusing to give support to...