Decoding "The Burial of the Dead"

The Anglican burial service, the "[[Order for the Burial of the Dead]]" saw a lot of use after the massive death toll of WWI, and the decimation of nearly an entire generation of England's young men.  Eliot, who had tried to join the U.S. Navy upon the outbreak of the Great War, was rejected for physical reasons.  After the rejection, he moved to England, where more young men died, and witnessed the decimation of fighting men, watching and waiting from the sidelines.  His feelings of impotence, his guilt, his anger, and the other personal anxieties resultant from his married life create the feelings of disillusionment and bitterness in "The Waste Land." Young Eliot, so firmly a staunch Anglican for most of his life, may have even experienced a crisis of faith.  By looking at the "[[The Waste Land Text]]," especially "The Burial of the Dead," and critically comparing it to the Anglican "[[Order for the Burial of the Dead]]," it is possible to see Eliot's concerns with the promise of salvation, in a time which seems to be comparable to the Biblical vision of the end times.