Modernists.

I did not wait until tonight to read The Waste Land, i took my time and still found this poem completely overwhelming. This reading seemed very dark, and the footnotes to the words he wrote were very long, that made me just more confused because you couldn't read without the footnotes, but to me the footnotes didnt make much sense anyhow. I don't think I could clearly state what the point that T.S. Eliot was trying to get across. Modernism from what i interpertated from class is a sense of lack of identity, violence, experimentation, speed of change in technology and communication. Besides the actual words in the poem, the way that the poem is actually written also classifies a peice as modernism. Sentence fragments, a rythum or pulse to it, their might be some traditional elements like nature. In The Waste Land, I did not find speed of change in technology, but I did find violence. "He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience" (page 1440 stanza 328-330)The writing itself was modernism because it contained fragmentation. Besides a good example of above another is, "April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire..." (Page 1430 first 3 lines) The way T.S. Eliot writes these, I got confused with the breaks on whether certain words went with certain phrases or the continued on one below but seemed to be it's own with the Capital letter. But the capital letter at the beginning of each stanza can just be the way of writing. I think all together that this peice was modernist, it shows certain places like the prison and describes this "unreal city," leaving this peice as kinda of impersonal. ALthough I'm not quite sure if any of that is what the reading was stating but that's what I interpreted out of it.