From the title,we can imagineEliot will shw us a bleak and revolting picture of modern society.the psyche of the people here is like the sterile desert,who are vacuous and listless,while they lose the passion and the ability of love.Also the people's life is dreary and insipid.The Waste Land is the set of poems which is after the World War .The real world is full of conflicts,theredor,Eliot will describe death in the poem.The real world is like hell,like a nightmae,and like the Waste Land.
　　 Furthermore,in the English Middle Ages the Fisher King legend became associated with the Arthurian legends,especially that of the quest for the Holy Grail(the vessel supposed to have been used by Jesus at the Last Supper).One of Arthur's knights,om a quest,endures temptations and agonies in the Waste Land,All of which culminate in the ordeal of the chapel Perolous;then,through the Grail,he becomes able to heal the Fisher King,and the land regains its fertility.The Grail is symbolicaly associated with the lance,the female and male symbols(Wang Guanglin,153)
　　 From the legend,we can understand why Eliot chooses the title--the Waste Land ,the monologist in the poem plays the persona just like the knight who heals the Fisher King and the Waste Land at last.Also we can understand what Eliot wants to tell us in the poem:he will show us a modern waste land ,while he will seek a way to heal the world.
　　B.the Epigraph
　　 "And as for the Sihyl,Isaw her with my ow eyes at Cumae,suspended in a bottle,and when boys asked her,‘Sibyl,what is your whish?’,she would reply,‘I want to die.’(Petronius,Satyricon).
　　 The Sibyl, a prophetess,had been given long life by Apollo,but she had failed to sak for eternal youth and health.(Xu Wenbo,45)Eliot uses Latin and Greek letters in order to make the poem cosmic unbiversality.From this quotation,the readers will commiserate the Sybil's deplorable circumstance which she can't comeinto the death,while she can't stop the consenescence,thereby,the readers will know it may not be good for people to be immortal.What is more,the readers will understand:no death,no reincarnation.
　　The Burial of the Dead
　　 "April is the cruellest month,breeding
　　 Liacs out of the dead land ,mixing
　　 Memory and desire,stirring
　　 Dull roots with spring rain.”
　　 These 4 lines echo Geoffrey Chaucer's "General Prologue”of the Canterbury.In Chaucer's eye,April is "sweet showers”and "west wind”,while in Eliot's eye,April is “dead land” and “dull roots”.Waster is in April，however，for Sibyl，“April is the cruellest month”.She can't die,so she can't rebirth.
　　 From line 35 to line 42,the monologistdepicts a story about himself and hyacinth girl.The girl said :"You gave me hyacinth,first a year ago.”But the monologist said:
　　 "-- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
　　 Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
　　 Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
　　 Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
　　 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. ”
　　 The flower of love which would be very beautiful didn't bloom at all.The monologist betrayed the love between himself and hyacinth girl."Desolate and empty the sea”,this quotation is rom Wagner'sTristan and Isolde,the words of the shepherd telling Tristan there is no sign of the Isolde coming to heal his mortal wound.(Pan Yuli,46)Such this kind of extreme despair ends the love story of the hyacinth girl,it's obciously that Eliot makes exegesis to the modern love just like this.
　　 Now,Let's read another Eliot's note:"I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards,from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind
　　with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant
　　appear later; also the ‘crowds of people,’and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite
　　arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself. ”（Eliot,1189)
　　 The Tarot cards were used originally as a part of fertility rites to "predict the rise and fall of the waters which brought fertility to the land" (Weston, From Ritual to Romance). The cards have four suits: cup (hearts), lance (diamonds), sword (spades), and dish (clubs). Among the cards are the Fool, the High Priestess, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man, and Death, but evidently no blank card, no drowned sailor. Certain other figures Eliot mentions here cannot be identified in the pack. The man with three staves may be the Pope, who carries a triple cross. The one-eyed merchant and his pack are likely the Fool, who on the Tarot card carries, on a wand over his back, a wallet or pack, the lock of which is in the form of a single eye. The Tarot symbolism suggests that the wallet contains the sum of past human experience, and that the eye which is the key to it is the all-seeing eye (compare the eye of Horus in Egyptian myth), the visionary power, by which man can gain access to a universal memory.In this part ,we can easily find death from the augury of “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante”.That is the thesis of the Part I--There is full of death in the modern society.
　　 In the last knot of the Part I,Eliot describes a horrible scene or readers.
　　 “Unreal City,
　　 Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
　　 A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
　　 I had not thought death had undone so many.”
　　 Here Eliot echoes Dante's Inferno.Date is led into the underworld,a dark plain just before they reach the great river over which Charon ferries the damned. There Dante sees a vast number, uttering cries in great pain: these are souls never sufficiently alive to be good or evil, but who cared only meanly for themselves: "And I looked and saw a flag that, whirling about, ran so quickly that it seemed to scorn to pause; and behind it came so long a line of people that I should never have believed death had undone so many.”（Zhang Jian，143）We can feel that：the hite_collar wor kers who go to work in a hurry become spooks in the hell；while the Thames which they go through also becomes thegreat river in the hell.Eliot shows us how horrible scene of modern cities.