T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land Wiki
Advertisement
Cleopatra taylor
Paris and Helen of Troy by Eruadan

Love for other people is a holy thing between two people with chemistry, but for Eliot, love is just about sexual desire of the man. But for the situation of a prostitute like Tiresias used to be, sex is just an emotional less motion between two people with no chemistry. And this is what Eliot wants to say in this part of the poem.  He wants to reflect that sexual relationship in this modern society is dirty, empty, and automatic. Love is plain and all the men come to get want they want and do what they want to do then just leave.

The evidence is when Eliot in the voice of Tiresias pay a visit to a female typist with her lustful small house agent’s clerk, when he came to sleep with her, then leave the girl alone in her bed with a thinking: “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” This sex happens is like a between costumer and a prostitute. It happened without emotion. The female typist doesn’t like it but she has no response to it. Sexual between them and maybe to many people in this society is like an impose. It doesn’t happen naturally but forcing to do.

So for Eliot, sex is an “earthy” thing, and lust is the sin that every human covered with. And when they die, they will be in the second layer of hell where Cleopatra and Helen of Troy- the women of lust is. Those women caused war and death to other people by their beauty and sexual desire. Helen of Troy caused a war between Sparta and Troy that killed thousands of men. 

Advertisement