In T.S. Eliot’s poem, Gerontion, the man narrating is stuck
in the middle—arguing with himself. When he says, “Thou hast not youth nor age…Dreaming
of both” he is saying that he’s stuck in the middle years—he isn’t young
anymore but he isn’t yet old. The beginning of the poem is also full of
comparisons. For example, “dry month” vs. “waiting for rain” compares dry and
rain. Also “neither at the hot gates nor fought in the warm rain nor deep in the
salt marsh, heaving a cutlass…” These comparisons are metaphorical of the end
of WWI. Europe isn’t in war yet but aren’t over it—they’re still recovering
from the destruction it caused. The narrator also questions God in the poem.
Near the beginning he says, “Came Christ the tiger” hinting that it was Christ
who saved them. However, later in the poem, he says ‘The tiger springs in the
new year. Us he devours.” It seems like the narrator is praising God for rescuing
them, but also questioning why he started the war in the first place and caused
so much destruction. The poem is full of comparisons and questions as the
narrator is stuck in confusion about the war ending and what to do now as the
world is left in turmoil.
I disagree with some of your interpretations of the poem. When Eliot wrote, “Thou hast not youth nor age…Dreaming of both” I don’t think he was trying to say that the narrator is middle aged. Instead I think he was trying to conceptualize the narrator for the reader, so that we thought of him less as a human being and more as an observing entity. And I don’t think that there is a huge contrast between wet and dry. “waiting for rain” doesn’t really contrast with dryness. And the poem begins with the narrator being “in a dry month” and ends on the same note. I believe that the purpose of the narrator saying he was “neither at the hot gates nor fought in the warm rain…” was to say that he was not a participant in WWI but an observer.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Mike said above about the contrasting elements. When Eliot discusses age in the opening stanza, I do not believe he is describing the narrator at all as he uses the second-person pronoun "thou", meaning "you". In fact, what I think he is describing is the people of the world as a whole. I think that in this he is critiquing post-WWI society for its folly in starting the war. By saying "thou hast not youth nor age" I believe Eliot is saying that there is no excuse for the war because it can't be blamed on the folly of youth nor the senility of age.
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