Fragments Shored Against Ruin: Destruction and the Possibility of Restoration in King Lear and “The Waste Land”

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s King Lear, and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” both depict worlds that have been destroyed, and reduced to wastelands. King Lear shows the collapse of a social order after familial and royal responsibilities are overlooked, while “The Waste Land” shows a world fragmented in the wake of the First World War. I will be looking at how the two texts describe how human society can be reduced to these ‘states of wasteland.’ Beyond this, in my research I hope to learn from the texts how humanity can rebuild, move beyond, or survive from such times based on the insight provided in the two texts. Both Eliot and King Lear, forward an idea that humans ultimately cause much of their own suffering. King Lear offers a more stoic response, claiming that people can only endure until their state improves. For his part, Eliot proposes that if humans change their behavior, they can alleviate the problems they cause, though this is more of an ideal whose attainability is left questionable.