Preliminary communication

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.47960/2303-7431.21.35.2026.79

THE FRAGMENTED IMAGE OF THE WORLD IN T. S. ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND FROM A HEIDEGGERIAN EXISTENTIAL-ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE

Ita Lučin ; University of Mostar, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences *

* Corresponding author.

Abstract

This paper approaches the poem The Waste Land from the perspective of existential analysis, viewing its characters and situations as expressions of a specific mode of human existence. In the light of Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein, it becomes evident that the characters remain trapped in the patterns of everydayness, while their finitude, rather than
prompting personal resolve, remains suppressed. The fragmented structure of the poem, the disrupted communication among the characters, and the pervasive presence of death all point to the difficulties of gathering existence around its own most proper possibility. Death, moreover, does not appear as a transformative experience, but as a remote dimension that fails to touch personal existence. Such a reading allows for an understanding of modernist fragmentation not merely as an aesthetic device, but as an indicator of a deeper ontological problem. Although points of contact between Eliot’s poetics and Heidegger’s thought have been noted in the course of research, this paper offers a systematic interpretive framework that, through the concepts of Dasein, authenticity, everydayness, resolve, falling, and being-towards-death, connects modernist waste to the question of the self-understanding of human existence.

Keywords

T. S. Eliot; The Waste Land; existential analysis; Dasein; being-towards-death; inauthenticity

Hrčak ID:

352639

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/352639

Publication date:

30.10.2026.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 0 *