Considering the understanding of insignificance existence that is firmly in place, the mind of the reader of The Waste Land can respond to the emotions that are redemptive and are being evoked by the liberating, salt-laden and refreshing opening verses. Eliot says that the soul is ravaged, just like the boat, by struggling spiritually and or by the harsh weather conditions. He adds impartial correlatives that are taken form Christian prayer like ‘grace’ and by using stars as redemption symbols. Eliot also uses literary images of deliverance in the religious background like the phrase “given or lent” which suggest that there exists a state of redemption. Later, the call of redemption intensifies and is irresistible, hence the experience that is felt permits the highly involved metaphor of the boat to retreat and faith is directly acknowledged. This leads to the advancement of the protagonist as a pessimist to that of the believer to take its place. The reference is in the following lines;
“This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me, let me.
Resign my life, my speech for that unspoken…” (Lines 204-206).
Eliot concludes his poem with a repetition of the first stanza through with a significant change in the language style he uses, and this is immediately noticeable. The metaphor of the boat gives us a direction upon which we observe that the granite shore is now no longer at a distance, but it is persistently coming closer. This signifies that the soul is now ready to surrender its existence that has been damaged even though it implies entering into a spiritual condition that is considered strange and is more demanding than the one left behind. Another change is seen in the nature of fog. Eliot points out that there is no more fog and this is used to signify that the perceiver has increasingly achieved better vision (belief), as he is preparing to surrender his soul to the saviour (as used in the Christian context). The mention of ‘daughter’ in the poem signifies the vulnerability of the earlier stages of spiritual growth. Marina miraculously recovers an idea that denotes that the protagonist has regained his lost faith in the act of living.
Although Hardy identifies the pattern and tone of his life with the heaths metaphorically, he is seen to resist the suggestions of the ghost that are named ‘the thing’. This metaphor signifies that the glowing sunset foreshadows better prospects for the future. In Hardy’s voice, we recognize that it is portrayed as that of the giant fairy tales whereby one has to wait a little while before he gets a breakthrough a metaphor that signifies fearlessness, pain, hopelessness.
The use of these narrative traits makes the term personification inadequate to describe the process by which the fairy tales is generated in the poem. All-natural factors held constant, and one may say that human characteristics are related to inanimate beings as an abstract to an impersonal entity inhumanly terms. The Return of the Native does not portray Edgon as a clear cut to animate or inanimate popularity before it is being assimilated to the other. The metaphoric expressions used in the first chapter are rendered human immediately they are posited as literal, and it becomes the home of strange phantoms. He continues to use metaphor expressions of nature whereby he uses phrases like wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be dreams of flight and disaster at midnight. These are never thought of after the dream until they are revisited by scenes like “without concluding his version of unconsciousness.”
The Return of the Native also uses metaphoric expressions that signify nature, just like what Eliot uses in his poem The Waste Land. Hardy uses literary expressions like the “movement of the storm/movement of the phantoms” that are statements that posit the heath as the native model of dream landscapers. He uses metaphoric phrases like “the skirting pool” which represents Eustacia. This phrase is followed by “the path towards the rainbow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze-roots, tufts of rushes and oozing lumps of fleshy fungi…” these statements are presented at a time when a season has laid scattered and bad lungs and liver of some colossal animal. All these are shown at a time when Eustacia is struggling towards her death. Here the heath is seen as a dismembered giant, neither human nor animate who is distributed spectacularly.
References
Poller, J., 2019. Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). In Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality (pp. 13-40). Brill.
The Return of the Native .” Novels for Students. Retrieved April 20, 2020, from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/return-native.