Depersonalization: Deconstructing Eliot’s Notion in The Waste Land

Abstract

Through a re-reading and a reassessment of Thomas Stearns Eliot’s (1888–1965) masterpiece The Waste Land (1922), the present paper aims at recycling the poem with new polysemy. By using specific methods of the psychoanalytic approach, this study demonstrates that many details about the text and its context are marginalized if read through the objective protocols of Eliot/the New Critics. Thus, the present paper is devoted to re-reading the text subjectively to deconstruct Eliot's “impersonal theory” in catering efficiently for the author’s presence. The conclusion will prove that the text is highly charged with personal tones, and consequently deviates from his theory of “Depersonalization,” thereby proving an authorial presence.