STRUCTURE OF WASTE LAND

Eliot writes his poem through a series of vignettes, which
depict the social and personal decay and despair of post-World War I Western
culture. 

Eliot is considered one of the most daring innovators of
twentieth-century poetry and as such, he refuses to compromise w/public values or
language (includes structure).  The focus of "The Wasteland" aims at a representation on
the complexities of modern civilization, which leads to difficult
poetry.

Because Eliot believed several things about current
installments of English poetry he worked to overcome what he saw as structural barriers:
 

• He saw English
  poetry as exhausted, no verbal excitement, or original
  craftsmanship


• He wanted to make poetry subtle, suggestive
  and precise


• The medium is the message (you won't find
  Eliot in "The Wasteland" there's no personality)


• He
  sought wit, allusiveness and irony and incorporated global poets to accomplish
  this


• Ample use of
  metaphor


• Explored the middle ground of human
  experience


• Symbolism influenced imagery; image was
  important because of its precision and endless suggestion in its relationship to other
  images


• Very interested in myths and rituals of
  Christianity--especially the legend of the Holy
  Grail


• Reaction against nature and realism, allow
  fluidity


• After a long run sans footnotes, Eliot begins to
  include footnotes, which should show the poem has some sort of
  meaning


• Eliot elimination all connective and transitional
  passages; he built meaning via the immediate juxtaposition of images w/o explaining what
  they were doing there


• He parceled together history,
  philosphy, Hindu, Buddhism, vaudeville, modern/ancient voices, high and low art,
  West/non-west languages; everything clashes
  together

 Ultimately,
he's questioning and seeking a sort of spiritual peace and illustrating in his structure
that we live in a world of moral decay, that the homogoneous world doesn't
exist.

Probably way more than what you needed, but this is
what Eliot considered when designing "The Wasteland"--all of the above components
contributed to the poem's structure.