A Fragmentary Wholeness:A Study Of The Art Of "Fragment" In The Waste Land

Due to its profound connotations and fragmentary structure, The Waste Land has been honored as "the milestone of modern poetry". From the perspective of text interpretation, poetic theory and artistic technique, critics at home and abroad have applied ecologism, feminism, archetypal criticism and moral theology to frame the fragmentary The Waste Land. In fact, with the world being diversified, "fragment" has become a conspicuous feature of modern society; as the product of that fragmentary society, The Waste Land itself is a modern picture of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps collaged by various languages and genres. Based on The Waste Land, the thesis takes "fragment" as the point of penetration, analyzes T. S. Eliot’s "fragment" consciousness, deconstructs and reconstructs "fragment", to explore how T. S. Eliot tries to achieve the redemption for the whole humankind via a poetic world of "fragment".The thesis comprises five parts. The introduction recounts T. S. Eliot’s life experiences, The Waste Land and its research status at home and abroad, to highlight the significance of the present study. The main body at first traces the sources of T. S. Eliot’s "fragment" consciousness. Time factors have enlightened T. S. Eliot’s "fragment" consciousness. With instrumental rationality and value rationality being unbalanced, economical, social and cultural spheres at the turn of the 20th century tended to be split apart. Meanwhile, Nietzsche’s irrationalism and perspectivism tried to deconstruct the world; Metaphysics, Imagism, the stream of consciousness and Cubism collaged fragments to reconstruct the world. Additionally, the bumpy and fragmentary life experiences also deepened T. S. Eliot’s awareness of "fragment" consciousness. The thesis then deconstructs The Waste Land to figure out its "fragment" feature under the guidance of Deconstructionism. Firstly, the mixture of multiple languages, the sharp contrast between emotional rendering and didactic function brought about by the co-existence of the plain and illogical colloquial speech and the refined literary language, and independent but interweaved cacophony veil the language a heterogeneous aura; secondly, the fluidity and uncertainty of "I", the frequent shifts among distinguished speakers, the seldom-ablated original cultural connotations of diverse ancient and modern elements melting in the same pot, and the cross-fade and cut structure which neglect transitional components make the content discontinued; thirdly, heteroglossia property, queer arrangements, indentation and italics smash the poem into pieces in terms of form. On the whole, heterogeneous languages, incoherent content and fragmentary form have shattered The Waste Land into a heap of meaningless fragments. The thesis ends with reconstructing fragments to explore their synthesized meanings. The Waste Land not being merely a reflection of the disintegrated society, irregular and fragmentary fragments are always forming new wholes. Classified, recombined and collaged, fragments, not only portray a waste land, with nature being sterile, religion abandoned, human dissimilated, to warn human of the world’s degenerating to nihilism; but also expose a promising land in which human are awakening and life bears strong tenacity to encourage human to strive for a new rebirth. The waste land’s warning and the promising Land’s encouraging, as two forms of redemption, reveal that closely-knitted fragments in essence have reached unification through ultimate redemption; therefore, The Waste Land practically is a fragmentary wholeness of redemption. Besides, another metaphysical unification hidden behind "fragment" is the collapse of the fragmentary state when human obtains redemption; namely, all creatures and things in the world are in harmonious coexistence and run normally, smoothly and orderly.The conclusion summarizes the thesis. The writer claims that, sensitive to the "fragment" trends of society, T. S. Eliot uses "fragment" in The Waste Land to mirror the disintegrated reality, and attempts to arouse human’s concern for and deliberation on his survival predicaments, with an aim of realizing the ultimate salvation and unification of the world. Hence, the art of "fragment" in The Waste Land in essence is a synthesis of fragmentation and unification, manifesting T. S. Eliot’s severe criticism of and ultimate concern for modern society.