This paper argues that The Waste land can be understood in terms of abundance and fertility, or life just as well as it can be in terms of ruin and desolation, or death. It captures the state of ruin or desolation or death in environmental metaphors such as the air-polluted London, the wastes-littered bank of the River Thames, and above all, the all-pervading super-dry environment it superbly presents. The barren sexual relationships between various couples are also used to present the female body on the same ontological status as the natural environment, both of them used as the dumping ground for human avarice or desire one example of which can be the commercial spirit represented by such figures as Mr. Eugenides. Against such destructive force as the avaricious commercial spirit that inevitably leads to the state of death, Eliot presents an ecological vision in which all creatures, whether animals, plants or mineral, are positioned on the same ontological level as humans. Eliot's readings, during his Harvard days, of biology, especially of heredity and eugenics as well as plant hybridization, and of eastern religions such as Buddhism, are adduced as the ultimate source of influence for such radical ecological vision as presented in The Waste Land. Eliot himself is thus argued to be a poet who attained the today's state-of-the-art ecological vision almost 50 years before any other ecological poets did.

• 신양숙(인천대학교) | Yang-Sook Shin