The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot, Part II: "The Game of Chess" on Zoom

The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot, Part II: "A Game of Chess" and "The Fire Sermon"

            The Waste Land, published in 1922, expresses with great power the disillusionment of the period after World War I.  This section of the poem, "The Game of Chess," introduces the theme of seduction. We meet two women from different parts of London and opposite ends of the social scale, the condition of their marriages encapsulates the anxiety, isolation, and pressures of the age. In "The Fire Sermon" the prophet Tiresias foresees the seduction of the "typist home at tea time."