George David Gopen Reads T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and provides a Close Textual Analysis
Learn along with George. His close analysis of Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece, examines how the poem’s fragmented voices, shifting registers, and dense allusions are built into the language itself, one line at a time. Drawing on decades of studying how readers actually process syntax and structure, George David Gopen unpacks the mechanics behind the poem’s most difficult passages — showing not just what the poem means, but how its sentences and rhythms create that meaning as they’re read.
Links below lead to the YouTube Playlist.
George David Gopen Reads T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
I. The Burial of the Dead
II. A Game of Chess
III. The Fire Sermon
IV. Death by Water
V. What the Thunder Said
George David Gopen’s Close Textual Analysis of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land
Introduction Part 1
Introduction Part 2
I. The Burial of the Dead
Lines 1 — 7
Lines 8 — 30
Lines 31 — 59
Lines 60 — 76
II. A Game of Chess
Lines 77 — 103
Lines 102 — 138
Lines 139 — 172
Lines 173 — 186
III. The Fire Sermon
Lines 187 — 248
Lines 249 — 311
IV. Death by Water
Lines 312 — 321
V. What the Thunder said
Lines 322 — 367
Lines 367 — 401
Lines 396 — 484 (End)