Mythic Violence in Eliot�s The Waste Land

English 272D
Fall 1998
Wollaeger Mythic Violence in Eliots The Waste Land and Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God Kris McAbee
Myth exists as a product of itself; by definition, myth embodies the traditions, beliefs, and ideals of society. The recurrence of tropes throughout literature establish them as mythic, and authors allude to these mythic structures to convey certain universal meanings. As such, through employing mythic structure, authors comment upon the role of their own works in the universal order. The fact that mythic structures are repeated cross-culturally evidences them as the outcome of primitive, common thought. These structures include concepts of life and death cycles; degeneration, death, and decay; purgation, purification, and rebirth; and creation and destruction. A common thread throughout the various mythic structures is that of violence. Violence is necessary for the completion of mythic processes. A simple example of this idea is the axiom that destruction (an intrinsically violent act) is a pre-requisite for creation. Along these lines, Rene Girard asserts, "Every god, hero, and mythic creature so far encountered, from the sacred African king to Chief Pestilence of the Tsimshians, embodies the interplay of violence projected by an act of generative unanimity" (250). In this way, mythic structure allows for rebirth and regeneration through the violence in descriptions of sexual passion, sacramental ritual, and individual or collective death.
Myth serves both metaphorical function and also establishes shape in the works of T. S. Eliot and Zora Neale Hurston. As Richard Ellmann observed of Eliot, "The element of myth in his art is not so much a creative method, a resumption of the role of mythic poet, as it is an intellectual strategy, a device for gaining perspective on himself and on his myth-forsaking time" (621). In "Ulysses, Order and Myth," Eliot himself describes the utilization of myth as "simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" (177). Thus, Eliot manipulates fundamental elements of myth, highlighted by his understanding of Westons From Ritual to Romance and Frazers The Golden Bough, to portray the decaying world in The Waste Land. While his adherence to myth is necessary to establish order in chaos, it is also vital in that these similarities give the departures from mythic structures significance and meaning in the wider context of the collective unconscious. Eliot is not alone in his pursuit of anthropological truths; just as he turned to the investigations of Weston and Frazer, Hurston took her study of folklore even further. Whereas Eliot studied anthropological works, Hurston was an anthropologist. As an author of two books on black mythology, Hurston relies on her own experiences, observations, and research as the anthropological reference for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She, like Eliot, clings to myth as a tool for placing her ideas about the present situation (in this case, of an African-American woman) in the context of a timeless human problem. Eliot, however, departs from the tropes of mythic violence to underscore the incompleteness and infertility of The Waste Land. Though both authors depend on myth for important symbolic statements, it is Hurstons adherence to and Eliots divergence from the regenerative violence of myth which expressly demonstrates rebirth and sterility of their respective works.
A key mythic structure in Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God is that of violent sexual passion, a trope completely and conspicuously absent in The Waste Land. Throughout Hurstons novel, the violence of the sexual passion effects for the central character of Janie a new sense of self. The idea of rebirth through the sex act follows logic because sexual activity is a generative exploit; however, the relationship between sex and violence allows for the establishment of a new order of in the realm of myth. The sex act, the animal process of creation, is an act of violence against the female form; Girard relates this sexual violence, which he calls "beneficial and life-giving," to the productive violence of sacrifice:
Even today, legitimized sexuality in the West reveals traces of its sacrificial character. The sexual relation of husband and wife is the central and fundamental issue of family life. After all, it is the origin of family life- and yet it is kept out of sight and plays no part, strictly speaking, in family life. As far as the closest relatives, particularly the children are concerned, the sexual relation of husband and wife does not exist. It is sometimes as thoroughly hidden as that most secret sort of violence, generative violence itself (220).
In this way, since Janies sexual activity does not result in the birth of a child- the beginning of a family life- the violent passion that Tea Cake exhibits with Janie results in a mythic new order. When these two characters first consummate their physical relationship, Tea Cake is described as "almost kissing [Janies] breath away. Holding her and caressing her as if he feared she might escape his grasp..." (103). Though not particularly negative imagery, this language does depict both the suffocation and capture of Janie. Her metaphorical rape shares mythic relevance in that it "was the beginning of things" (103). Hurstons use of mythic structure is further established at this point by her reference to "the fiend from hell specially sent to lovers... Doubt." Hurstons language here is that of classical myth and folklore.
The other depiction of Janies and Tea Cakes sexual activity includes rape imagery as well. When Janie grows jealous over another womans playful flirtations with Tea Cake, she lashes out at him and the resulting scuffle dissolves into passionate love-making. Significantly, Nunkies flirtation consists of hitting "Tea Cake playfully and the minute he so much as tapped her with his finger shed fall against him or fall on the ground and have to be picked up. Shed be almost helpless (130). Though she shows initiative, Nunkies advances end with her in complete submission to Tea Cake, which does not allow for the desired generative violence that occurs with Janie:
They fought on. ... Janie seethed. But Tea Cake never let go. They wrestled on until they were doped with their own fumes and emanations; till their clothes had been torn away; till he hurled her to the floor and held her there melting her resistance with the heat of his body... (132). By hurling her to the floor, Tea Cake enacts the violence necessary for a new beginning. As such, the chapter ends and a new chapter begins with a new season.
The sexual violence in Their Eyes Were Watching God starkly contrasts the impassionate, sterile sexual imagery in The Waste Land. Eliot completely intends this contrast; in trying to point out the infertility and hopelessness of contemporary society, he alludes to overtly mythical accounts of rape but conspicuously omits the customarily inherent violence, thus suggesting that ancient patterns of renewal are no longer effective.
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
Jug Jug to dirty ears (l. 99-103).
In this reference, the rape of Philomel, which in the Ovidian (as well as in the Shakespearean adaptations) resulted in a new world order, changes nothing. Though she still changes into a nightingale, her song fill only a desert, suggesting that no one hears her song- that no lesson is learned. The idea of an "inviolable voice" suggests the futility of her singing; the chastity implied here is a further deviation from the mythic tradition. Furthermore, "still the world pursues" underscores the lack of change, the lack of rebirth and regeneration. The nightingales beautiful song of triumph and redemption is reduced to "jug, jug" heard only by "dirty ears." This line intimates Eliots view of a corrupted, indifferent society, a society which can not establish a new order.
The scene in The Waste Land which comes closest to a violent sex act, merely leaves both participants indifferent, and resolves itself in routine:
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresisas have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
Well now thats done: and Im glad its over."
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone (l. 235- 256).
This portrayal reverses the interaction of Tea Cake and Janie on every level; it mostly closely resembles that of Tea Cake and Nunkie, but even there Nunkie had some desire for Tea Cake. The woman in this poem is desireless while the man behaves as though this act is his duty. The only consequences of this somewhat mechanical and impassionate sex act are "unlit" stairs and a "half-formed thought." In this way, Eliot demonstrates how the sterility of contemporary relationships sheds no figurative light on life and results in nothing but incompleteness. Moreover, by narrating this account through the voice of Tiresias, Eliot underscores the role that myth plays in the poem and, therefore, the lack of violence and subsequent regeneration.
Eliot further depicts a vision of sterile, impassionate sex in lines 139-164 which refer to a womans abortions and subsequent sexlessness; her friend, admonishing her for how the procedure caused her "to look so antique," wonders, "Why you get married for if you dont want children?" Although the act of abortion is a violent one, it is the violence of child birth which serves as the trope in mythic tradition. Therefore, her subsequent implied infertility, underscored by the departure from myth, indicates the infertility of life in general.
Moreover, Eliot uses this depiction of an adulterous, loveless, infertile marriage to demonstrate the absence of constructive violence in a mythic trope other than the sex act- that of ritual, in this case the marriage rites. Girard addresses this generative role of violence in mythic ritual:
At present we have good reason to believe that the violence directed against the surrogate victim might well be radically generative, in that, by putting an end to the vicious and destructive cycle of violence, it simultaneously initiates another and constructive cycle, that of the sacrificial rite- which protects the community form that same violence and allows culture to flourish. If this is true, the generative violence constitutes at least the indirect origin of all those things that men hold most dear and that they strive most ardently to preserve. (93). True, the marriage rites are not sacrificial in the strict sense, yet Girard asserts that "the sacrificial deviations of sexuality and violence are virtually indistinguishable. Marriage vows can be duly attended by ritualized violence, analogous to other forms of ritual warfare" (220). Thus, the mythic structure of ritual entails a fundamental aspect of violence; therefore, Eliots portrayal of a mediocre and detached marriage demonstrates a lack of generative violence, and, in this way, no hope for societal renewal.
Of great significance here is Hurstons use of ritual and the associated violence in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The clearest example of ritualistic violence is the scene with the vultures at the mules funeral. Girards criticism clarifies this complex episode:

...many etiological myths deal with the murder of one mythological character by other mythological characters. That event is conceived as the origin of the cultural order; the dead divinity becomes the source not only of sacred rites but also of matrimonial regulations and proscriptions of every kind; in short, of all those cultural forms that give man his unique humanity (93). According to this interpretation, the mule can be seen as murdered either by the townsfolk or by the buzzards who descend upon it after its actual death. In the first case, the resulting ritual is the grotesquely formal funeral the townspeople have for it: "Out in the swamp they made great ceremony over the mule" (57). This ceremony dissolves into the ritualistic consumption of the carcass by the buzzards, who Hurston personifies and details in a bizarre discourse:

"What killed this man?"
The chorus answered, "Bare, bare fat."
"What killed this man?"
"Bare, bare fat."
"What killed this man?"
"Bare, bare fat."
"Wholl stand his funeral?"
"We!!!!!"
"Well, all right now."
So he picked out the eyes in the ceremonial way and the feast went on. The yaller mule was gone from the town scept for the porch talk, and for the children visiting his bleaching bones now and then in the spirit of adventure (58).
Again, Hurston employs elements of classical mythology in her depiction of an event; the chorus of the vultures echoes that of chorus of Greek tragedy, while the result of this drama is "porch talk," Hurstons equivalent to the Ovidian trope of fama, the "common talk" which composes the famous stories that evolve into folklore and myth. She therefore establishes the mule as a sort of twisted mythic hero, whose death allows those "cultural forms that give man his unique humanity."
The mules funeral is not the only example Hurstons interest in the ceremonial rites of funerals. After Joes death she describes the ritualistic activity of the townspeople: "The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Nevermore. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside" (84). This detached and verbless description implies the universality and impersonality of the ceremony; it is simply what people do when someone dies- not what people do when specifically Joe dies. The language allows the ceremony to resemble a sacrificial rite, implying the violence that Girard describes as generative. Thus, Janie undergoes a change after the funeral: "Before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house the next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist" (85). Janie is finally able to become the woman that Joe never allowed her to be.
Hurston, like Eliot, also confronts the element of violence in marriage rituals. Her characters engage in courtship role-playing, underscoring the ceremonial nature of courtship, which includes a great degree of rivalry with all the implied violence of the gallantry of medieval times: "They know its not courtship. Its acting-out courtship and everybody is in the play" (63). "The boys had to act out their rivalry too. Only this time, everybody knew they meant some of it" (64). Janies witness of this event, and subsequent removal from it by her husband, results in her cognition about her own affairs: "Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage" (67). In this way, the completion of the mythic ritual, including the fundamental violence, generates thoughts and expectations on Janies part, contrasting the "half-formed thought" of The Waste Land.
Hurston also details the ritual of violence inherent in marriage; however, it is this violence which allows Janie to break free from the constraints of traditional marriage roles. When Joe grows angry that Janie ruins dinner and he slaps her "until she ha[s] a ringing sound in her ears," Janie reassesses her marriage and tries to begin again.

... her image of Jodie tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it was never the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither glistening young fruit where petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she has never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in the parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she new how not to mix them.
She bathed and put on a fresh dress and head kerchief and went on to the store before Jody had time to send for her. That was a bow to the outside of things (67-68).
The ritual violence of the marriage allows for the evolution of an inside and outside Janie, at which point she puts on a "fresh dress" and begins somewhat renewed; in the very least, Janie has gained understanding, proving the generative power of violence. In fact, Hurston implies through the character of Mrs. Tony, that a lack of this violence in the marriage will merely keep partners in suspended role-playing, that is, further adherence to ritual. When she comes into the store and makes a scene, Joe plays along and gives her some food. But he later reveals, "Well, Tony tells me to humor her along. ... He say he cant bear to leave her and he hate to kill her, so taint nothin to do but put up wid her" (70). Although the other men claim that they would beat her if she were married to them, Tony himself does not beat his wife, allowing her to run around playing the role of the starving, unappreciated wife (which may, in fact, not be far from the truth) and preventing any chance of marital reassessment, according to the mythic trope of violence in marriage.
Janie, however, is beaten by both Joe and Tea Cake respectively. In addition to the above example, Joe hits Janie a final time, "he struck Janie with all his might," an act which immediately precedes his decline and eventual death (76). Thus, the violence here is generative in that it turns back on the aggressor, killing him, allowing Janie to evolve in a new life alone. Later, Tea Cakes violence against Janie is similarly generative. Hurston underscores the ritualistic role of violence by pointing out that Janie did not actually deserve a beating:

Before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior had justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession. No brutal beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he was boss. Everybody talked about it next day in the fields. It aroused a sort of envy in both men and women. The way he petted and pampered her as if those two or three face slaps had nearly killed her made the women see visions and the helpless way she hung on him made men dream dreams (140). By beating Janie, Tea Cake fulfills a ritualistic role, resolving the previous issues he had about possession and meanwhile generating mimetic desire in the people of the town.
Although ritualistic violence does play a role in The Waste Land, this violence is incomplete and is, therefore, not generative. To a great degree, Eliot relies on Frazers The Golden Bough for his representations of mythic ritual. Frazer describes the principle observances which sustain the cyclical nature of life, including that of purgation. Purgation is achieved through "fire-festivals" which involve burning effigies in an attempt to "remov[e] all those forces which threaten animal, vegetable, and human growth" (Vickery, 63). The violent implications here are inescapable; according to the relationship of myth and violence, purgation necessarily involves destruction through fire of a mock-human form so that the positive effect of a cleansing can be experienced. The Buddhist "burning burning burning" of "The Fire Sermon" is the closest the poem comes to completion of a mythic cycle. Here, the narrator approaches the purgative effects of fire, which can then result in rebirth. However, this Buddhist imagery occurs in conjunction with an image of western asceticism: "O Lord thou pluckest me out," (l. 309). One can not experience the mythologically cathartic effects of fire if one is plucked from the flames. In this way, Eliot fails to complete the image of ritualistic violence, preventing the completion of the mythic cycle and, therefore, expressing the infertility he sees as the scourge upon The Waste Land.
Along these lines, purification goes hand in hand with purgation; the pure water puts out the destructive fire. Purification rituals center around the idea that sins can be washed away, resulting in what are now seen as baptismal rituals. In their simplicity, these rites seem to lack the violence necessary for rebirth. However, in some baptismal ceremonies intending to allow its participators a closer communion with god, "the initiate [is] baptismally drenched in the blood of a bull, after which he [is] regarded as one who [has] been born again to eternal life" (Vickery, 64). While the slaughtering of the bull and the use of its blood as a baptismal agent is violent, it is the implied violence of actually being drenched in blood that is of importance here; blood and water are conflated and just as the blood is arrested from the bulls body, water is arrested from the land. Meanwhile, the intimated carnage signifies the death of an individual in order to be reborn. However, in The Waste Land, no such rebirth is experienced because just as there is no violence, there is no blood and there is no water: "Here is no water but only rock" (l. 331).
However, the vivifying effect of water in conjunction with mythic violence does appear in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The hurricane/flood scene corresponds with mythic structure. The dog's violent death marks the end of the hurricane sequence, leaving Janie and Tea Cake to recover in a "waste land," with the "hand of horror on everything" (161). They return to where they started, where a new order has been established- all the same people, but a brand new house and brand new work (which were the central aspects of their life on the muck). Then Tea Cake's death establishes a new order in that Janie returns to her life before Tea Cake but with a new sense of self and life. The significance of the violence of the dog's death and then Tea Cake's death lies in the transference; the dog intends to hurt Janie and Tea Cake kills him, and then Tea Cake intends to hurt Janie and Janie kills him. However, it does not follow that Janie would intend to hurt herself and then kill herself because it is the dog which is the source of the violence, and his violent death allows rebirth. Unfortunately, Tea Cake becomes the dog, so he too has to die; after the struggle is over, Tea Cake says "Ah didn't mean tuh take his hate neither. He had tuh die uh me one" (158). In one way, Tea Cake "took" the dog's hate in that he suffered violence at the hands [teeth] of the hateful dog, but in another, he "took" the dog's hate as his own and started hating Janie too. Which adds irony to the final line in Chapter 18: "...Ah want yuh tuh know it's uh man heah." During her trial Janie explains that "He had to die to get rid of the dog" (178). So Tea Cake became the dog (he even bit her!) and had to die. The dog's violent death results in the dog's rebirth in Tea Cake, who's violent death results in his rebirth through Janie: "He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking" (183).
The occurrences of death in Their Eyes Were Watching God constitute the final example of Hurstons adherence to the tradition of mythic violence in order to signify rebirth. As Girard proposes,

Death is the ultimate violence that can be inflicted on a living being. ... Whatever the cause and circumstances of his death, the dying man finds himself in a situation similar to that of the surrogate victim vis-a-vis the community. The grief of the mourner is a curious mixture of terror and hope- a mixture conducive to resolutions of good conduct in the future. The death of the individual has something of the quality of a tribute levied for the continued existence of the collectivity. A human being dies, and the solidarity of the survivors is enhanced by his death. The surrogate victim dies so that the entire community, threatened by the same fate, can be reborn in a new or renewed cultural order (255). Certainly, after the deaths of the mule, Joe Starks, and especially Tea Cake, the respective communities find renewed solidarity; likewise, Janie undergoes a fundamental change. For example, after Joe dies, Janie realizes of herself, "The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place" (83). Furthermore, according to Girard, Hurstons account of both the communitys and Janies rebirth relies on generative violence by virtue of the fact that death, "the ultimate violence," is involved.
Although Eliot portrays a lifeless, barren "waste land" in his poem, he does not consequentially establish a basis for the "ultimate violence" of death either; rather, he describes a stagnated society lacking in both complete life and complete death. In this way, he fails to provide the necessary violent imagery to imply rebirth, but by nonetheless evoking mythic structure he emphasizes the discrepancy and thus intimates that he expects no hope for such regeneration. For example, he repeats images of the living dead or the dying living: "... I do not find/ The Hanged Man. Fear death by water" (l.54-55). First, the Hanged Man, the Jesus figure, represents the dying and reviving god of myth; however, he can not be found. Second, his fear of death by is completely unfounded because "there is no water" (l. 331). This idea relates back to the line "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" (30). Since there is no water to purify- that is, kill and revive- him, all he actually has to fear is sterile dust. Another example of the conflation of life and death in The Waste Land, occurs in Eliots description of the people of London going to work in the morning:

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many,
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine
(l. 62-68).
Here Eliot employs the ultimate image of the "workaday stiff"; he implies that the constraints and decay of modern society has resulted in the soulessness of its people. As such, he says "... I was neither/ Living nor dead, and I knew nothing" (l.39-40). Again Eliot relies on the ability of mythic violence to be generative through imparting knowledge and appropriately perverts this trope to suggest that the lack of complete death- of complete violence- produces nothing. The final example of death in The Waste Land,

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience (l.328-330)
suggests a state of limbo for contemporary society. The people were living but are not yet dead; the completion of the process will take patience. Again, Eliot does not complete the violence in order to impart his lack of faith in the usual mythic regeneration.
Although both Eliot and Hurston use myth to provide structure and meaning to their works, it is their differing treatment of the essential mythic trope of violence which most accurately portrays their contrasting messages. While Hurston depicts the evolution of an African-American woman as a product of her culture (thus the role of black folklore in her fiction), Eliot endeavors to illustrate the complexities of the collective contemporary English existence and his fundamental lack of faith in societys evolution after the destruction of World War I.

Works Cited

Eliot, T. S. "Ulysses, Order, and Myth," from Selected
Prose of T. S. Eliot. Frank Kermode, ed. London :
Faber and Faber, 1975. 177.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Harcourt Brace
& Company: New York, 1958.
Ellmann, Richard and Charles Feidelson, Jr., ed. The Modern
Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Girard, Rene. Violence and the Sacred. Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Harper &
Row Publishers: New York, 1990.
Vickery, John B. The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough.
Princeton University Press, 1973.