Living Through the In-Between: T. S Eliot’s Philosophy of Human Existence

Abstract

This research paper aims to highlight the philosophical perspective of T. S. Eliot on the existence of modern human beings on earth. The recurring meaninglessness and alienation expressed in the poems “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Man” are discussed based on the context in which the poet correlateswith the reality experienced by the people. The encroachment of modernity of the twentieth-century civilization points to the loss of individual traditions, rootlessness and disorientation. The perpetual enquiries on the binaries are negated through the introduction of the intermediary space of existence. Certain vocabulary used in the poems throws light onto the existence of the poetic subjects in their in-between states referring to the presence of neither/nor situations. The fundamental nature of the reality and existence characterised by Eliot is revealed through the analysis of the poems as an experience of identity crisis amidst the politico-social situations leading to uncertain, anxious and ambiguous states of living. The paper concludes with the discovery of liminality and liminal existence of the poetic subjects that represent the existence of human beings regardless of time and place.