The narrator also makes mention of the Drowned Phoenician Sailor “a fortnight dead”. The water that is present in “Death by Water” depicts rebirth and death through water. Death refers to the already spiritually dead man, as well as the passing of that dead person. Here life is the bloom of something new, in this case salvation of a man who is already spiritually dead. Cleanth Brooks points out that, “the symbol of life stands also for a kind of death”. Asking if the corpse will be sprout, stating if new life will come from something dead. With death comes the cycle of being recreated, renewed, and reborn.
This idea is emphasized when the narrator asks, “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,/ Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year”. Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth from something dead. This again shows the paradox of death and rebirth, as Christ is being referred to as both resurrection and Death. Although Eliot intended this person to be Christ, the figure takes on the image of Death, “Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded”. The paring of the resurrection of Christ, who died for the sins of the world, and spring, shows the idea of rebirth as a form of salvation. In the last section of the poem, “What the Thunder Said, “the narrator brings up the image of a resurrected Christ, when he asks the person he is with, “Who is the third who walks always beside you?”. The image of a delicate flower rising up from something cruel shows the constant cycle of death and rebirth however, the description given of spring is also “strange and puzzling, a resistance to life and denial of hope and rebirth”. Although he does point out that lilacs are “breeding,” they are rising from “dead land”.
Spring is a time for renewal and life, yet the narrator points out that April is cruel. April is “the most fundamental sign of life and hope – the rebirth of vegetation in spring”. April is considered a time of rebirth because it is both a spring month and the month that Easter is celebrated. The first line of the poem brings up this idea as the narrator mentions that, “April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land”. The idea of death and rebirth is present throughout Eliot’s The Waste Land. "The Idea Of Death And Rebirth In The Wasteland" Get custom paper
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