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| | ==A Violent Game of Chess== | | ==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.
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| − | First of all, the title comes from Thomas Middleton’s play, Women Beware Women. This play centers on the destructive forces of women, which is ironic considering the references that Eliot puts into the A Game of Chess section. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Anthony and Cleopatra, Hamlet and even Dido and Aeneas by Virgil. These women all suffered cruel ends, Cleopatra and her infamous death; Dido’s death too was infamous as well as Ophelia’s from Hamlet. These women suffered cruelly at the end and of their life including Philomela from Metamorphosis who just suffered greatly and caused everyone else to suffer with her. The suffering of the women becomes ironic when used to describe the upper-class woman in her room. However, these violent suffering are perhaps most sardonic in the fact that the play Women Beware Women inspired Eliot’s section title for the women all die violent deaths. So from the start there becomes a great sense of violence with the description of the upper-class woman in her room who described with these violent references becomes a symbol of classical violence herself in The Wasteland. Yet it is the settings that also show the violence of the references for The Wasteland’s A Game of Chess.
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| − | This violence may not be easy to tell from the settings alone, but if thought about it becomes clearer. For example, John Milton’s Pandemonium from Paradise Lost is the capital of hell in which,
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| − | “A solemn Councel forthwith to be held
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| − | At Pandæmonium, the high Capital
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| − | Of Satan and his Peers:” (757).
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| − | While not directly reverenced in The Wasteland, the fact that Eliot chose to reference Paradise Lost during the scene of the fall of which “Satan comes in view in Eden (Book IV, lines 131-142” (Windingway). He also chose Ovid’s tale of Philomela from Metamorphosis in which Philomela is taken to the woods in Thrace by the king and raped, she tells her sister who avenges Philomela by killing their son and feeding the boy to the king. However, the scene that Eliot refers to is the change of Philomela into the Nightngale, after all the violence occurred yet even so the change of Philomela takes on a violent turn:
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| − | “Around the smoaky roof the other flies;
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| − | Whose feathers yet the marks of murder stain,
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| − | Where stampt upon her breast, the crimson spots remain.” (Ovid)
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| − | Eliot then seems to be using the violent transformation of Philomela as a symbol to the violence of The Wasteland and how the violence began to transform England. It’s intriguing that the first half of A Game of Chess in The Wasteland references such violent myths and places. This can be seen in his reference to Dido where not only does the story of Dido and Aneas become violent, but what happens directly to the city of Carthage ends up being violent as well. The mention of Dido, whose story is similar to Philomela’s in the way of violent endings, seems to follow the path of destruction through The Wasteland and Eliot’s use of these references just further demonstrates it. However, there is another point toward the connection of using mytss and classical works that links itself to the modern end of A Game of Chess.
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| − | Abortion occurs in A Game of Chess and itself becomes a violent nature that Eliot seems to be responding to “the same cultural crisis by dramatizing concerns about the differential birthrate” (Hauck 111). In the Beginning of A Game of Chess there sits an upper class woman in her boudoir, an almost literal Cleopata:
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| − | “The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
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| − | Glowed on the marble, where the glass
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| − | Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines” (Eliot 77-79)
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| − | Yet it’s not so obvious here where the abortion lies for while in part one of A Game of Chess enters the upper class world of London, then swiftly it turns toward the middle/working class where concerns of birth and abortion are at hand. However, the concern of abortion can be revisited through Philomela where Philomela’s sister cooks her son Itys as a sign of vengeance against her husband. Cooking Itys can be viewed as a form of abortion for Philomela’s sister is destroying her child for the sake of vengeance and to rid the world of another possible Tereus. In the second half of A Game of Chess a conversation between two “friends” occur:
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| − | “You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
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| − | (And her only thirty-one.)
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| − | I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
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| − | It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
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| − | (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)” (Eliot 156-60)
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| − | These lines tell of the worry of the working class when it comes to abortion. Unlike the upper class woman in the beginning who does not worry about children, Lil on the other hand must. For as the friend of Lil’s mentions she almost died of one of hers and so took an abortion to the friend. So the concern of the working class seems to be about not just the effects of abortion but being able to survive the numerous births that they must suffer. Yet it cannot be forgotten the upper class woman in the beginning who Eliot refers the destructive classical myths and plays to. For the upper class had debates over the “emotionally and biologically sterile upper-class, whose reproductive failure seems to portend Britain’s demise” in regards to (Hauck 112). However, abortion in A Game of Chess relates to the certain topic of the violence of The Wasteland because through Lil one can see how agonizingly the pills have affected Lil who claims that “the chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same” (Eliot line 161). In truth Lil’s feelings about having done the abortion seem more like a commentary on how no one will be the same because of the war. The Wasteland commenting on abortion signifies the change in society and at the same time the violence in society because of it.
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| − | Abortion can be considered the main topic for Eliot in A Game of Chess because of not only the conversation between Lil and her friend, but because of the upper-class commentary on artificiality and the sterility in upper-class birth. His commentary on abortion in A Game of Chess promotes reason to the fears of both the upper-class and the working class. These fears stimulate from the loss of a generation that Eliot echoes through The Wasteland. By commenting on the 19th century fears of the upper-class unable to produce and the lower class unable to stop producing, he shows how another generation could be lost just as easily as the generation that became lost due to the war. In fact it could be argued that the topic of abortion really plays a role in illustrating the loss of the generation to the war by bringing a loss to the upper and lower classes due to the debates about abortion and sterile relationships.
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| − | A Game of Chess incorporates its violent nature with the use of classical myths and plays to the modern everyday life, then ending it with the modern and myth combined. In the start the woman sitting in her room described with references to Shakespearian plays, classical myths and other areas. She becomes a classical figure herself, but it’s all artificial considering the women that become the woman’s description were destroyed with bitter ends. Cleopatra’s suicide over Anthony, Dido’s suicide over Aeneas, whose love was indeed artificial since Aphrodite ordered her son Eros to shoot Dido with an arrow of love. So the upper-class became forced with an artificial destruction while the lower classes become cursed with dying off because of constant births or because they took abortion medicine. This fall of the classes in A Game of Chess reveals how society in The Wasteland is falling.
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| − | What’s more is that the bridge of classical references to modern references seems to be a commentary on the lost golden age of England’s love for classical. An example comes from:
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| − | “O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
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| − | It's so elegant
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| − | So intelligent” (lines 128-30)
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| − | Here, Eliot combines the once popular song O That Mysterious Rag with Shakespeare’s name in a fusion of classical reference with modern. It’s done again at the end of A Game of Chess when the pub closes down for the night “Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night” (Eliot line 172) This line derives from Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the last line before Ophelia is found dead. Therefore it’s an interesting turn of events for the classical reference to show the violent means of the modern. Considering that the English often referenced Shakespeare and other classics in their works it’s only natural for Eliot to write about the loss of these classics that represented England in a way through the loss of the generation and clearly the home.
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| | ===Bibliography=== | | ===Bibliography=== |
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| − | Hauck, Christina. “Through a Glass Darkly: “A Game of Chess” and Twp Plays by Marie Stopes”. Journal of Modern Literature. 21.1 (Summer, 1997): 109-119. Web.
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| − | Kenneth Reckford. Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics , Third Series, Vol. 3, No. 2/3 (Fall, 1995 - Winter, 1996), pp. 43-80
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| | Go to [[ "A Game of Chess" Annotations]] | | Go to [[ "A Game of Chess" Annotations]] |
