Trauma, war, and disillusionment in T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Author: Mohammad Ekramul Hassan, Rubina Parveen Khan

Keywords: waste land, war, disillusionment, trauma, spiritual, intellectual bankruptcy

Abstract: T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’ is one of symbolic poems that reflect the hollowness and ambiguity of modern society. It is poem that reflects very soul of modern generation with all its horrors, moral, spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy, disillusionment and waste. It particularly exposes the horror of war and the waste and rigidity that accompany and follow the modern warfare. Life-in-death has been the theme of the poem. Modern man who loses faith in God and thus loss of vitality, both spiritual and emotional because of lose of faith in religion. All these disillusionment acquired after the second world war two. People lost morality and it was a situation of moral degradation. Thus T. S. Eliot like other poet of that time engaged himself writing poem that could mirror of the society that was passing through hollowness and disillusion.

Article Info: Received: 19 Jan 2026; Received in revised form: 22 Feb 2026; Accepted: 25 Feb 2026; Available online: 28 Feb 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijeel.5.1.7

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