The Waste Land and the Road to Emmaus

Abstract

The game-changing status afforded to The Waste Land complicates any evaluation of the poem’s quality, since it broke most of the old formal rules. To equate the poem with “Modernism” does not help. Some difficulties with reception can be removed (e.g. calling it The Wasteland makes readers think it is about the 1914-18 war, which it is not). The Notes can be demystified. This article spells out the Christian focus of Part V, which is often overlooked.