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The Quest for Meaning in "The Waste Land" and "Sanctuary": a Comparative Study

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The Quest for Meaning in W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1986 The Quest for Meaning in "The Waste Land" and "Sanctuary": A Comparative Study Mary Katherine Compton College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Compton, Mary Katherine, "The Quest for Meaning in "The Waste Land" and "Sanctuary": A Comparative Study" (1986). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625352. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-mb3f-k002 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE QUEST FOR MEANING IN THE WASTE LAND AND SANCTUARY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Mary Katherine Compton 1986 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Approved, August 1986 Walter P. Wenska i / V ' W. Conlee UJ Henry W. Hajft ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The writer wishes to express her appreciation to Dr. Walter P. Wenska, under whose guidance this study was completed. The author is also indebted to Dr. John W. Conlee and Dr. Henry W. Hart for their careful reading and criticism of the manuscript. ABSTRACT Frazer's The Golden Bough has had a profound impact on modern literature, especially on the understanding of the centrality of myth in the human experience. Two works that utilize vegetation mythology from Frazer's study are T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and William Faulkner's Sanctuary, as demonstrated by John Vickery in The Literary Impact of the Golden Bough and by Thomas McHaney in "Sanctuary and Frazer's Slain Kings." In his discussion of The Waste Land Vickery proposes that the vegetation/fertility rituals serve as a means through which the protagonist is able to achieve a heightened religious consciousness. Myth is similarly central in Horace Benbow's search for meaning in Sanctuary. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which Frazer's vegetation/fertility rituals and myths are used by both Eliot in The Waste Land and Faulkner in Sanctuary as progressive stages in the reclamation or attainment of religious consciousness and to trace the protagonist's development or lack of conscious development in the respective works. While Eliot's protagonist in the end perceives an intrinsic mythic order that leads to the expansion of his religious consciousness and the restoration of the waste land, Horace Benbow searches for but cannot find an underlying positive mythic pattern that would set his own world in order. i v THE QUEST FOR MEANING IN THE WASTE LAND AND SANCTUARY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Certainly Frazer’s The Golden Boucrh has had a profound effect on the understanding of the centrality of myth in the human experience. That T.S. Eliot knew and utilized The Golden Bough in addition to Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance as a source for vegetation and fertility ceremonies in The Waste Land is documented in his Notes (Complete Poems 50). Similarly, Thomas McHaney asserts in the article "Sanctuary and Frazer's Slain Kings" that William Faulkner knew and utilized vegetation and fertility myths from The Golden Bough in the novel Sanctuary (McHaney 224). McHaney also suggests that Faulkner was influenced by T.S. Eliot's use of Frazer and finds that Sanctuary is "a brilliantly successful adaptation of Eliot's idea in The Waste Land, a subtle and fully articulated suffusion of primitive myth and ritual into a modern fiction" (224). As evidenced by the use of vegetation myth in their respective works, both Eliot and Faulkner found myth a means of "giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" (Eliot, Dial 480-83). Beyond providing an inherent order, myth aids both Eliot and Faulkner in articulating thematic concerns. John Vickery in his explication of The Waste Land in The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough asserts that in The Waste Land nature myths and fertility rituals "convey 2. the theme of growth and recovery of religious consciousness of man throughout his history" and that vegetation myths and rituals are presented as "progressive stages in the gradual evolution of man's religious consciousness" (244-45). In Vickery's view, the whole of The Waste Land can be seen as the protagonist's quest for religious consciousness with fertility/vegetation rituals providing rites of passage to ultimate reclamation of religious knowledge; these rites of passage or trials are "calculated to determine whether or not the protagonist is a true hero" (244). A similar interest is apparent in Sanctuary, especially seen in the protagonist Horace Benbow's search for meaning in the waste land presented in the novel. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which vegetation/fertility rituals and myths are used by Eliot and Faulkner in The Waste Land and Sanctuary as progressive stages in the reclamation or attainment of religious consciousness and to trace the protagonist's development or lack of conscious development in the respective works. Initially some clarification of the nature and role of the protagonist in The Waste Land and Sanctuary is in order. Both Eliot and Faulkner present protagonists who seek meanings beyond those that are offered by contemporary society. Eliot's multifaceted protagonist searches for meanings for the present in ancient ritual. Not only is Eliot's protagonist acting for himself, but he is the "hero savior of his people who seeks spiritual and psychological salvation for his society" (Vickery 246). "Hero savior of his people" is an ill-fitting epithet for Faulkner's Horace Benbow, who has been described by Cleanth Brooks as "a bookish, middle-aged inhabitant of the modern waste land" (13 0). It is clear, however, that Horace is particularly suited for his role as protagonist inasmuch as he seeks personal fulfillment and refuge from the torment of his marriage outside the bounds of contemporary society. Armed with a book of poetry, Horace as questor seeks the Delta uplands, and "a hill to lie on," searching for restoration in the solitude of a natural setting (Sanctuary 16; ch. 2). That he is uniquely capable of recognizing that the restoration/fulfillment and refuge he seeks must be found beyond the modern waste land fundamentally links Horace to Eliot's protagonist. The season that serves as the opening for both The Waste Land and Sanctuary is paradoxically a dead spring: both beginnings reinforce the "interrelation of death and life on the vegetative level" (Vickery 247) . While in both works spring signals the seasonal blooming and even seething of vegetation— as in the case of Faulkner's Heaven Tree outside the Jefferson jail— this furious rebirth is anthropologically juxtaposed with burial ceremonies and rituals for the protection of men from the power of evil. The ritual deaths of both Christ and the vegetation god Adonis are particularly associated with protection from evil and physical and spiritual regeneration (Vickery 5. 248). Ironically, Horace Benbow finds no protection through ritual from the depravity that he discovers in the course of the novel and becomes completely ineffectual in his contest with evil (Brooks 116). Eliot's depiction of April as the cruelest month has its anthropological source in Frazer, who records that in the interval between mid-April and the middle of June "the land of Egypt is but half alive, waiting for the new Nile" (Vickery 248). Just as Eliot's April establishes a bond with vegetative rites and ritual behavior found in The Golden Bough, so Benbow's beginning his quest on May 3rd becomes ritually significant, since early May is traditionally linked to the regenerative/restorative ceremonies integral to the celebration of the rites of spring (Frazer 137-54). In addition to the depiction of spring as ritually critical in anthropological terms and its ironic connections with death, spring is also portrayed by both Eliot and Faulkner as a season of sterility and desolation. Eliot's inclusion of images of arid waste marked by sun-scorched roots, trees, and rocks, in conjunction with the opening description of breeding lilacs and the stirring of dry roots, indicate a physical fecundity on the vegetative level while spiritual sterility and death remain constant. Likewise, Faulkner's description of the Old Frenchman place demonstrates quite clearly the waste land equation of chaotic, rife verdure juxtaposed with spiritual/moral sterility: The gaunt ruin of the house rose against the sky, above the massed and matted cedar, lightless, desolate, and profound. The road was an eroded scar too deep to be a road and too straight to be a ditch.... choked with fern and rotted leaves and branches. (18-19; ch. 2) In the property is reflected the sterility and depravity of the inhabitants as Horace discovers— after his encounter with Popeye— the blind, unkempt grandfather, the half-wit Tommy, and Ruby with her debilitated infant. The idea that the desolation of the land is reflected in, and perhaps caused by, the sterility— both physical and moral— of its inhabitants finds its source in Jessie Weston*s From Ritual to Romance, specifically in her depiction of the Fisher King whom Eliot adapts in the creation of his protagonist (Complete Poems 50-51).
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