Eliot generally looks with disregard at those who try to criticize him. The notes he puts are in response to an insistence that his poem be lengthened, and can be read with a sarcastic tone. Many other notes, including his note on the tarot cards in which he admits to not understanding the composition of the deck and manipulating it to his will, showcase Eliot's view of this work as uniquely his own with little regard to critical or consensus opinion of it. However, the preface goes on to say that the hypocritical reader is one's second self. Eliot, in engaging in creating a work that contains so many references and ideals is bound to contradict himself. He is bound to give two ideas that are inherently contradictory equal standing in his poem. However, just as readers may criticize his work and in so doing be hypocritical, the work is hypocritical in and of itself. As Seven Old Men ends in saying, "In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, The whirling storm but drove her back again; And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea." Eliot tries to take a sea of media and history and human art and condense it into one narrative. The piece, however, is a piece that depicts a wasteland. It is one soul, one artwork, against the monstrous and shoreless sea of society at large and the social perception of art.

Tarot cards depict vague images which may be adapted with symbology to indicate one of a myriad of things in modern life. For instance, one who draws the hanged man may not necessarily walk the gallows the very next day. However, the symbology remains pertinent even to this day. Similarly, the story of star-crossed lovers dying a tragic death together is one that is repeated throughout the ages. Tristan and Isolde, in addition to being a precursor to Le Morte D'Arthur, could also have images that remind the reader of Romeo and Juliet. Belladonna reminds the reader of the Virgin Mary. Any one card can be compared to and contrasted against millions of situations. A tarot card with the Virgin Mary is itself a form of irony, contrasting the occult with the Christian faith. However, that same card can evoke the story of Tristan and Isolde, albeit Tristan is an English sailor and not a Phoenician one, nor was his end one of drowning. However, his untimely and tragic death brings Isolde, seeking to heal him or at least die alongside him. She is the lady of situations, originally due to be wed to Mark and now in love madly with Tristan. Similarly, Mary did not expect to be with the child of God, however, it altered her life. As Isolde says before her death alongside her lover, "How softly and gently he smiles, how sweetly his eyes open - can you see, my friends, do you not see it? How he glows ever brighter, raising himself high amidst the stars? Do you not see it?" (25) Though his eyes may not be pearls, they are the eyes of a dead sailor, seen one last time by a woman who comes to heal him, love him, or die alongside him.

God speaks to Ezekiel, referring to him as "Son of man" (Ezekiel, 2:1). He says he will speak unto thee. Ezekiel is the chosen prophet to deliver a message to the people of Israel. God tells them that if they obey, they shall be rewarded as the children of gods. If they do not obey, however, they shall be killed and their bodies laid around the altars to their idols. As he states, "I will scatter your bones round about your altars." (Ezekiel, 6:5) The Burial of the Dead is not unlike this. World War One is a war fought over borders, power, and commerce, all of which man often would value above God. The rows and rows of graves after a war fought over such desires seems indicative of the making good of God's promise to spread the people's bones about their altars. Each grave is one individual's altar to their country and cause. It is not to undermine the nobility of these men, however. God may recognize that a man is capable of being redeemed should they accept him. Thus, stony rubbish may represent the graves. What grows out of it is the souls of the people who were slain in a war, taken out of "The Waste Land" and into a new land. As God ends in saying, " Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. [13] And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, [14] And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD." (Ezekiel, 37:12-14) A story exists in WW1 history of a poppy growing from the blood of fallen soldiers in Flanders, Belgium. In the midst of utter desolation, one may in dying escape "The Waste Land" and be transported somewhere better, or from the ashes of the "The Waste Land" something beautiful may grow.

When a caterpillar undergoes metamorphosis, and in so doing becomes a butterfly, it becomes markedly more beautiful — at least in the common opinion. Simultaneously, however, it becomes harder to follow. A caterpillar crawls around the ground in predictable and trackable movements. Butterflies have the gift of flight and of beauty, making them a more delightful yet more fleeting sight. Eliot chooses, in renaming and restarting the poem, to allow it to undergo metamorphosis. The original title and opening are decidedly easier to follow, yet they lack a certain poetic beauty present, at least in my opinion, in the draft as published. That is not to say the prior one is without its merits. A caterpillar must have existed for a butterfly to emerge. However, one can see in the plea in this epigraph a woman yearning for death. Whether or not she will be reborn is an open question, but having existed in the same predictable form only to whither has brought her agony. The works emphasized here operate under the theme of beauty emerging from death or rebirth. As Sybil states, eventually she will wither and become irrelevant, but she will still have a voice: "I will go as far as having to suffer transformation, and I will be viewed as non-existent, but still known as a voice: the fates will bequeath me a voice." (1) Older art forms are enfranchised by Eliot to have that same voice, even if they do not themselves undergo metamorphosis. Similarly, at Trimalchio's feast, the gutted pig provides sausage and blood pudding. Out of the death of one entity, itself considered unworthy, another more practical one emerges. However, it depended on that which preceded it. Marlow also explains in Conrad that, "I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal." (6) Kurtz no longer exists in corporeal form. Sybil will not when she withers enough. However, their voices live on in those who will dare to hear them. One may become something more beautiful or may simply die, but voices live on amongst those who will hear them.

The word waste is decidedly different from many words with which it is used interchangeably, such as junk or trash. Generally, the latter two evoke the idea that something is not now, nor has it ever been, of value. Waste, on the contrary, is not always waste. Rather, waste is formed as a byproduct of a valuable reaction, and is itself likely composed of the leftovers of something that was once itself valuable. When one wastes food, for instance, it does not mean that the food was inedible, but rather that one simply chose not to eat it. Waste also enables people to recognize that though something may not be present now, just as a wasteland is evocative of an area in which nothing can grow, that does not mean the area has necessarily always been barren and desolate. In ritual to romance, Weston says "Therefore the written word had to be found. It has taken me some nine or ten years longer to complete the evidence, but the chain is at last linked up..." (1) By virtue of analyzing features of a certain story, Weston is able to bring in more evidence and link it to others. Eliot works in The Waste Land of post WWI, but he too acts as a sort of tailor, sewing up what once was into one distinct narrative, despite drawing on so many narratives of the past. The Waste Land is an endeavor of recognizing the components that were present before the waste. Furthermore, the story of the Grail itself speaks of the restoration of a Waste Land connected with the death of an unknown and unnamed knight. Gawain's quest to seek knowledge and understand the past, even as some aspects remain unclear, is a quest to restore the Waste Land. Eliot's is strikingly similar. Ultimately, the final consequence of Gawain and some forms of Perceval's quest is not necessarily to seek the grail for its own sake, but rather, the restoration of the land. Eliot's poem, however iconic, is just as valuable for its restoration of other works and myths as it is as a standalone work.

Similarly, in the myth of Osiris, the God-King is killed and strewn into pieces. When Osiris is revived, he is no longer the divine king of Egypt, bringing unto the kingdom prosperity. Egypt itself was formed upon an oasis in an otherwise uninhabitable desert, a wasteland. However, Osiris is resurrected king of the dead. Eliot does much the same with the stories he tells. They do not necessarily return to public prominence, but they are bandaged and revived. They live on not as the art du jour, but nevertheless, their art is forever preserved in relics. Art brought purpose to humanity, bringing us from the Waste Land. Even as any one form of art becomes obsolete, it remains intrinsically valuable insofar as it influences in some nonlinear progression the art of today.