The Choice of "Little Gidding"

The Choice of "Little Gidding"

  • Submitted By: scyonto
  • Date Submitted: 04/14/2010 9:26 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1424
  • Page: 6
  • Views: 339

Few pieces of modern literature have captured the atrocity and destruction of human conflict as T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding.” Eliot, drawing from his life as a Christian and his experience as an air raid warden during The Blitz, implores readers to make a choice between destruction and salvation, and it is this choice that drives the poem; Eliot’s hope is to use this portrait of a butchered London to urge readers to accept a Christian society and to turn away from terrorism, sin and war. He presents this choice through his depiction of fire, his stressing of a self-sacrificial purgation and his utilization of the character of the compound ghost.
Many critics of Eliot have suggested that the poems in The Four Quartets are characterized by the four mythological elements: “Burnt Norton” characterized by air; “East Coker” characterized by earth; “Dry Salvages” characterized by water. The element that is most dominant in the characterization of “Little Gidding,” however, is fire. Fire has been viewed in radically different manners in the past: while some philosophers—such as Herakleitos, who portrayed fire as the ultimate source of the world—identify fire as a creating force, in much literature fire is used for and portrayed as an agent of destruction and terrorism, and at least in part, the same can be said of “Little Gidding”; in the poem, the Battle of Britain is reenacted with London being bombed by Nazi planes, the city covered in ash and being consumed by flames—this fire is clearly an agent of destruction and evil: a tool of violence utilized by invading armies. But there is more to the fire than destruction and pain. Eliot in “Little Gidding,” describes the source of the flames: “The dove descending breaks the air with flame of incandescent terror…” The dove seems to resemble a dive-bomber, bringing terror and destruction down upon the streets of London, but this portrayal of fire also suggests a dual meaning: instead portraying fire as solely being an...

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