Treatment of Time in The Waste Land
Time is an eternal phenomenon in The Waste Land. The Waste Land considers the relationship between life in time, a life of bondage and suffering, and life in eternity. Time is the expression of the timeless in the phenomenal world and eternity pervades every changing element of temporal existence. At the very opening, Eliot has used the epigraph of the poem from Petronius, "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in her cage, and when the boys said, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied I want to die." Sybil is a symbol of timeless time since she is suspended in jar and she can not die, still she is ageing. On the other hand she is captured in human’s time trap showing how time decays youth. Sybil is associated with the eternal cycle of birth, death and re-birth. However, the Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own: He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its ...