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'''A Violent Game of Chess'''

Chess, a game where strategy and manipulation are the tools needed to oust the competition. To be declared the winner one has to know how the game is played and how to formulate a plan that can beat the enemy. A game of wits and mind over matter, A Game of Chess becomes a section that T.S. Eliot incorporates in his poem The Wasteland. Yet the game of chess in The Wasteland does not give a clear outlook on how the poem presents itself to becoming like the game. No, one has to look closely at the selected works that Eliot references in his poem; Shakespeare’s ''Anthony and Cleopatra'', ''The Tempest'', ''Hamlet'', Ovid’s ''Philomela'', Virgil’s Aeneid, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Thomas Middleton’s ''Women Beware Women'', and John Webster’s The Devil’s Law Case. As well as reference to the classic hit song The Mysterious Rag and Good Night Ladies of Eliot’s time. These references have settings that are clearly used to demonstrate the violence and pain of The Wasteland, and it creates a bridge from the old to the new with its references by manipulating them to form the ''A Game of Chess'' section.