Eliot's Journey

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Eliot’s Journey “Journey of the Magi” is a dramatic monologue dealing with a man’s death and reincarnation, in his religious belief. T.S. Elliot fulfills one of the requirements of a dramatic monologue by using a singular speaker. He uses one of the magi in order to accomplish this task of portraying his speech and thought. By expressing a point of view through the use of a character, Eliot fulfills another requirement of a dramatic monologue. Some scholars argue this as a free verse poem bearing no resemblance to Eliot’s life. Splitting the work into three stanzas, Eliot correlates the poem to his life as follows: unhappy marriage and life, a journey from his troubling beginnings, and in the end finding enlightenment through religion. This reveals that “The Journey of the Magi” is much more than a simple bible story regarding the Three Wise Men. Upon first inspection of reading the poem, the reader might develop a sense that Eliot’s is only writing about the journey of the three Magi trying to reach the baby Jesus. Harris argues in his essay that Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” is usually discounted as an “unassuming Christmas poem” or given only the most rudimentary of “biblical glosses”, while it occupying a central position in his poetic development. The poem speaks with a “single individualized voice” dramatically masking itself and forming a bridge with some of his earlier works like “Waste Land”, with is multiple voices, and “Ash-Wednesday”, with its autobiographical voice. (Harris 838) Eliot uses the magi as a speaker in the poem instead writing a straight forward autobiography about himself. Eliot does a wonderful job of transforming biographical material into dramatic monologue. The poem was set-up this way, writing the in a more subjunctive manor. Using a subjective strategy forces the poem’s to an open interpretation by the reader. Eliot’s childhood
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