T.S. Eliot, Wait What?

Single person monologue:

(As if reading a poem)-

“Let us go then you and I

and uncover the meaning of Prufrock, the Wasteland, and the Hollow Men.”

(Then normal speech while moving around or doing whatever)-

At some point in our literary education, our teacher presents us with a poem from TS Eliot, reads it, and then asks us what we think. As good, yet naïve, students, we use our knowledge to try and take apart the poem and find a nugget of meaning; but, invariably, we come out empty handed and turn towards our teachers with absolutely no idea of what is going on. They, in turn, help us to get started and slowly we see a glimmer of light, and begin to understand what they poems are trying to say, or at least that is what we have always thought. But…. Maybe this just isn’t the case.

There is a saying that goes, “Meaning is an interaction between the text and the reader.” And yet, after we read these poems, understand nothing, and ask for help, our teachers proceed to help us see that “meaning.” But maybe that defies the point, or it is the point… has anyone ever thought that maybe there is no deeper meaning in these poems? That lines like “winter kept us warm” aren’t actually supposed to make any sense? I mean, after world war I, not much in the world did make sense…

“Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.”

Why do these lines have to reference the plague or something paralleling it? Maybe we just need to take them at face value, a play off of a nursery rhyme.

And maybe, just maybe… that one book that we all find so funny, yet so bizarre actually gets it right.

When ex-P.F,C Wintergreen calls General Peckem and the other officers and says, “T.S. Eliot” causing a panic as the officers all try to figure out what this could be code for, the reader of course laughs…. But maybe there is more truth in this than we thought; maybe we really are trying to find meaning in something that was never intended to have meaning….

Who is right? Our English teachers telling us to continue our search for meaning, or the simplistic idea that by searching for meaning, we are missing the actual point? One could say… this really is quite a Catch-22.