The Waste Land

Give examples of love and lust in The Waste Land

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Eliot expresses disillusionment through episodes of joyless sex, such as through the example of Philomel, upon whom sex is forced. In fact Eliot employs a litany of joyless sexual situations, including the rich couple who would rather play chess than have sex, and the poor couple for whom sex becomes a way only of pleasing the husband, and even then, only if the wife has "a nice set" of teeth. There is no love in any of these unions, and in the case of the poor couple, the wife has started having abortions because she "nearly died of young George," one of her children. This purposeful killing of new life is another way Eliot shows how people are disillusioned regarding sex and how procreative power in many cases is lost. But perhaps the most prominent example of meaningless sex comes during the scene between the typist and the clerk. Following this joyless sexual encounter, in which the man satisfies his lust, he leaves the woman, who is "Hardly aware of her departed lover." Her indifference shows in her simple actions: "She smooths her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramophone." Her hand, like the sex itself, is "automatic," without emotion, merely a routine act.

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