Analysis of T. S. Eliots East Coker Essay examples

Analysis of T. S. Eliots East Coker The early poetry of T. S. Eliot, poems such as The Wasteland or The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is filled his despair of the human condition. Man is a weak soul, easily tempted and filled with lusts, who has no hope of redemption. These views of man did not change when Eliot converted to Catholicism. Eliot still maintained mans desperate plight, but supplemented that belief with the notion that man has some hope through the work of Christ. This expanded view first appeared with the publication of Burnt Norton in 1935. From this poem, Eliot built a delicately intricate set of Christian devotional poems, Four Quartets.†¦show more content†¦Eliot opens the first section of East Coker with the banner In my beginning is my end (l.1). This line is a reversal of the motto of Mary Queen of Scots, in my end is my beginning (Blamires 41). Here lies the foundation of Eliots notion of determinism. It suggests that a mans life and death has been determined at the time of his birth. In the act of coming into the world he is resigned merely to enact that which has already been planned for him. Eliot goes on to describe the birth and death cycle of houses, both physical houses and dynasties (Blamires 41). He reminds the reader that every home will eventually be torn down and replaced, every ruling family will yield power to another. Once a house falls its elements are recycled and recombine to form the next generation. Eliot then brings the reader into the physical realm, somewhere just outside of East Coker. Again, the power of determinism is found in the language. Eliot describes the subject, the you, as standing in a particular lane which insists (l. 18) on his journey into the village; he is hypnotised (l. 20). But Eliot keeps the reader outside the village in a nearby field. There, the poet finds ghosts from the past enacting an ancient marriage celebration. Eliot