Decoding "The Burial of the Dead"
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(→Figure 1: Eliot's Prophetic Terms from "The Burial of the Dead" -vs- "Order for the Burial of the Dead") |
(→Figure 2: Recurrent Words from "The Burial of the Dead") |
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Go to [["The Burial of the Dead" Annotations]] | Go to [["The Burial of the Dead" Annotations]] | ||
| − | The words that do feature prominently in Eliot's "The Burial of the Dead," are particularly telling for his attitude. Both "dead," and "death," feature prominently, but so does "shadow," "winter," "roots," and "fear." The last, "fear," introduces the crisis of faith most strongly. | + | The words that do feature prominently in Eliot's "The Burial of the Dead," are particularly telling for his attitude. Both "dead," and "death," feature prominently, but so does "shadow," "winter," "roots," and "fear." The last, "fear," introduces the crisis of faith most strongly. One of the interesting correlations of Figure 2 is the path that "dead," "winter," and "roots," share for most of the graph. This is telling, because roots do not really die in the winter, they merely remain dormant. Of course, in the poem, the dead feed on the roots,a and the winter preserves their bodies, so either way, the poem speaks to death as a temporary state. Nevertheless, it is one to be feared. The biggest peak in the graph is "death." Underneath that peak, there is one little bump for "fear." This arrangement brings into mind the Lord's Prayer. It would appear that in the shadow, there is fear. However, the final three to drop off, "fear," "death," and "dead" fall off the graph in that order. As "fear" is quelled, "death is vanquished," and the "dead" are no longer dead. The graph ends with a rise in the word "garden," indicating that the soil is fertile for new life. This brings to mind the very end of "The Burial of the Dead," when the narrator asks Stetson if "that corpse you planted last year...has it begun to sprout?" as though there is an expectation that the dead are like seeds, germinating under the earth (lines 71-72). In this last section, even the resurrection of the dead is mentioned in an oblique manner. One of the voices says "Oh keep the Dog (capitalization original) far hence, that's friend to men, or with his nails he'll dig it up again." (lines 74-75). Just as Christ is a product of his father, God, the word Dog is an inversion of God. While this interpretation might be a stretch elsewhere, the capital "D" like the capital "G" in God makes this connection clear. Further "with his nails," easily refers to the nails of the Cross, since Jesus' death is the guarantee of salvation for all, and thus, resurrection for all Christians. |
