the narrator said he was waiting for judgement in the first lines of gerontion.
the narrator said he was waiting for judgement in the first lines of gerontion.
what does the narrator say he is waiting for in the first lines of gerontion?
judgement
many of the themes within "gerontion" are present throughout eliot's later works, especially within "the waste land". this is especially true of the internal struggle within the poem and the narrator's "waiting for rain". time is also altered by allowing past and present to be superimposed, and a series of places and characters connected to various cultures are introduced.









































section::::themes.:religion.
gerontion
in lines 17–19, gerontion alludes to the pharisees' statement to christ in matthew 12:38 when they say "master, we would see a sign from thee." the narrator of the poem uses these words in a different manner:









































james longenbach argues that these lines show that gerontion is unable to extract the spiritual meaning of the biblical text because he is unable to understand words in a spiritual sense: "gerontion's words have no metaphysical buttressing, and his language is studded with puns, words within words. the passage on history is a series of metaphors that dissolve into incomprehensibility".









































section::::themes.:sexuality.
gerontion