History's Ambiguities

Forgive me for mixing up blog posting weeks. In my opinion, Eliot begins Gerontion by suggesting that he is a bit out-of-the loop, so to speak. He says that he was "neither at the hot gates nor fought in the warm rain nor knee deep in the salt marsh." He is living a normal life, where the "woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea, sneezes at evening." So the speaker's knowledge of the war is second-hand, which is an important point later in the poem. For the speaker, “signs are taken for wonders.” Signs here are knowledge of what happened in the war. So with the knowledge that the speaker does receive, he says that forgiveness is an impossibility. History contains a lot of hidden or ambiguous information, as the speaker describes when he refers to its cunning passages and contrived corridors. But the information that is given either does not provide an accurate account or is too late to change one’s opinion of an historical event. “[She] Gives too late what’s not believed in, or is still believed, in memory only, reconsidered passion.”