Modernism In T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Modernism, as a movement, can be plainly understood as a conscious and essential transfer away from tradition and accordingly by the employment of novel and revolutionary range of expression. Thus, a visible amendment can be seen in fields of art and literature from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The ‘traditional’ approach and reaction became outmoded in the new-fangled circumstances and were substituted by ‘modern’ philosophy. Social change and advancement in the field of science and technology embarked on, pushing away the modernists from Victorian morals and conventions to modernize, unconventional principles.
T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land, is an exemplary of Modernist text, in which Eliot largely discusses the emotional trauma of war crisis. The poet, through his artistic abilities reflects upon desolation, angst, despondency, meaninglessness, disarray, fragmentation of a modern man: here, affected by war. The opening lines of the poem, “April is the cruelest month” depict nature with a lot of pessimism and associate nature with the idea of loss. Where spring has always been described as regeneration of life and is celebrated by one and all, in this case, though, it is entitled as the “cruelest” month;

Pirandello gave immense significance to metaphysical and aesthetic thoughts, which are evident in his work (Terry Fairchild, Studies in the Literary Imagination). Pirandello, like various other modern writers, focused on bringing out the facts and realities of the present world, which were fragmented in nature. Pirandello’s work investigates truth; rational, social and individual, and through these investigations he tries to depict societal consciousness. Luigi Pirandello (1869-1936) deviated from the conventions of realist theatre with his two major plays, Six Characters in search of an Author (1921) and Henry IV