How the King of the Wood Became the King of the Hood

There are certain themes that transcends cultures; you will find them in different times and places represented in different ways but always trying to solve the same mystery. It is difficult to name them because they have different names in each different culture that believes their way of dealing with the problem is the best. In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot is making a statement about his place in time. After World War I the land and its hollow inhabitants are in a wasted state. The cause of this is relationships that have gone wrong, and by the conclusions of sympathetic magic this lack of fertile harmony will cause the earth to go into its cycle of death for rebirth. In his album King, T.I. (or Clifford Harris) tells the story of his own time in his own place. It is a story that has been repeated hundreds of times in hundreds of places. In his book The Golden Bough, James Frazer chronicles the evolution of a story that transcends cultures. His is the story of the priesthood of Nemi, the King of the Wood, the man in the relationship that has gone wrong after World War I. Frazer’s story ends in 1922, George Lucas continues it in a galaxy far away, but T.I. resurrects the saga  today, in the place he knows best.

From the first words of the album T.I. is bringing the words of the past, these situations that have applied to people throughout time, and representing the emotions in his contemporary language. He uses many different musical techniques, inspired by many different musicians, to get his messages across. T.I. references them in order to draw upon ideas that resonate in his music, much like the allusions in The Waste Land. T.I. in King will portray himself in a dual fashion, he will function as the King of the Wood and the Fisher King simultaneously. There is some conflict of ideas here but the character he creates for himself in his music takes a dual role. There is a large initiation theme in King, because of the heavy insistence on it in the life he has lived, the life he raps about. I’m going to take the album song by song, giving snapshots of how T.I. represents most modern version of a story that has been retold for centuries.

“King Back” -

[Excerpt from "Sting of The Serpent"]
“And the prophecy read that
One day like the pheonix rose from the ashes
That a boy will be born unto a family in the slums
This boy will go on to use the knowledge he gained
While fighting for survival in the streets
To become a great leader
And in time that boy would grow to become King!”

The album begins with this initiation as drums sound tribal noises in the background. The speaker seems as if he is announcing the story to a large audience, he is the priest, the leader of this initiation rite. T.I. must rise from the ashes of his neighborhood, a place with many traps he has learned to avoid. (throughout the album Harris will allude to these traps and those who have fallen before him in the same quest) I don’t want to get long-winded about each lyric in every song so basically T.I. talks shit, says he’s the King of the Wood, an Arthur type king on whose help the land depends now that he is on top. Just like the priest at Nemi he must guard himself, for all are gunning for him, but through it all he will stay number one. The confidence he sees as a necessary quality in defending his title. Also a little bit about the opening lines - Ray Davies pinned “Sting of the Serpent” a singer/songwriter for The Kinks whose lyrics oftern contained satirical elements mocking the superficiality of the pop subculture. His works present contrasts in that they seem to have varied moods, tones and messages throughout his career.

The second song, “Front Back” (title note: Kinks sang the song “Back to Front,” perhaps T.I. wants to go the other direction?) explains the seeds of disturbance found that will threaten T.I. There is also a song “Front Back Side to Side” (the lyrics of the first part of the song) written by Chad Butler, a southern Texas rapper with ties to T.I. for his album King that was unreleased as he was found dead in a hotel room in Houston at 33 years-old.

“What You Know” was the first hit of the album and had much success as a single before its second release on King. For this reason I don’t give it much thought but if you must it’s just more T.I. explaining characteristics of the King of the Wood today and why he’s all of them.

“I’m Talkin’ to You” is one of the more glaring songs in terns of Golden Bough similarity. It’s going to start out with a statement of the world in his eyes, it’s a different state that the one in The Waste Land. But he tells the state of the world for the same purpose as Eliot and the Album will tell the story. The health of the Hood certainly depends on its King, and if you believe a fourth of what T.I. says about himself that’s definitely him. One funny incongruity in the song, for the King “I’ll give it to you straight, I don’t need a metaphor.” but then in the next line he uses one “How many different ways to say I’m gettin chedda more.” T.I. goes on to call the fake ones out, making enemies but really only doing so to validate himself to his audience. “Even After my life haters be after my life.”

“Live in the Sky” Here T.I. puts his experiences and words into a cycle of death and rebirth and applies them to his audience by taking a collection of different situations, bringing them together by rhyme, and defining his explanation of that cycle. He speaks of his son Messiah, “Black Messiah” is another Ray Davies song, I haven’t checked out any possible connections. After he talks about his quest, a constant quest necessary for the King to keep the land healthy. This is the Grand Hustle he keeps referencing, the modern grail quest.  He draws the connection between the King and the Land  and defines the methods of his quest and violent means to his ends. Also he says his cousin’s death was a lesson in his life (he looks up to his cousin as a former quester for the spot of King) His cousin’s death taught him to deal with the ups and downs, a necessary characteristic of the King he says. “a Million haters want me dead forced  to carry a gat.” Makes it clear that the King of the Wood is today the King of the Hood. the song ends with T.I. talking about his kids recognizing the historical influence of the cycle of death and rebirth on his story.

The next song “Ride Wit Me” is all about the Grand Hustle, the grail quest. More on the quest later. “Why You Wanna” brings the aspect of the physical temptation Percival went through to cloud the vision and distract the King, but he recognizes it as a necessary part of the Hustle.

“Get It” - It’s the grail. The thing that will keep the block moving as it should is actually drug sales and he has the monopoly on that, the block is healthy at this point. “Top Back” is the most musically satisfying song on the album because it continues the heath of the block began by the success of the King earlier. So therefore the King Says “I’m Straight” (the songs featuring other people tend to have less along the theme) Undertaker the next song implies a death, it is a turning point before what in the fire sermon happens when you let go of the aversions (one is talked about in “Why you Wanna”).

Horns announce the coming of the next song, “Why you Wanna” which is another part of the quest.The next  song, “You Know Who” will do what it takes to restore the land, that makes the King, that’s T.I. By the next two songs T.I. has accomplished his task, explaining how along the way. “Told You So,” the second to last song is the end of the story. He told us that he would restore the block and accomplish his “Grand Hustle.” The final song ends the album strong asking where a King can go next if he has no opponents to challenge him… (The next album is T.I. vs. TIP, Harris’ other nickname that becomes a separate rapping persona) He’s pretty much assuming at this point King will get album of the year. And he’s right he should have.

In other albums T.I. references his quest and even The Wast Land. In “Bring ‘em Out” T.I. references “A Game of Chess” unless it is some expression I haven’t heard. He’s is saying his quest is precarious like a game of chess it is just interesting that he used those words. This is another reason T.I. views himself as the quester, the dual King. The black and white cover and the title of his next album would suggest that he recognizes his role in the Hood as The King and the quester.

Suffrage

The path towards women’s suffrage demonstrated one of the key changes in the world society. The movement paved the way for a pursuit of equality and was the root of the modern feminist movement. The right to vote in the United States was granted to women in 1920 through the nineteenth amendment. In the United Kingdom, the reluctance for women’s suffrage was more pronounced and after almost a century of activism, women were granted the right to vote in 1928. I’m going to delve into the suffrage movements of both the United States and the United Kingdom and show how Eliot’s writings relate, if at all, to the women’s movements of the era.

Paper Topic

During the 1920’s there occurred a mass exodus of the literary elite in the United States to Europe, mainly to the city of Paris.  Great minds such as Fitzgerald, Stein, and Hemingway all left the States to seek a more fulfilling and exciting life abroad.  Slowly an ex-patriot culture began to show itself, some would dub this group the “Lost Generation.” 

I plan to investigate and discuss the mindset that these individuals created for themselves while abroad.  I plan to use Hemingway to spear head this investigation.

Monkeys in the Waste Land

In western and classical culture, there was a prevailing idea of how the world was ordered. The order was strict and very hierarchal. This formerly prevailing idea is known as the Great chain of being. It is strict, and works well with the creation story. It makes nature seem very orderly. In 1859 Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published, and this idea of the Great Chain of Being was challenged significantly for the first time. There was a great religious backlash to the idea that humans could be considered a type of animal.

This backlash was what caused the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 to become an issue of great national interest. It also brought two of the most prominent legal minds of the day, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, to the case. This trial is related to the wasteland in that symbolizes a people’s unwillingness to accept a breakdown of the Great Chain of Being. The Waste Land also deals with the disorder caused by this new idea.

The Russian Revolution

My paper will explore the roll of the Russian Revolution and its dramatic upheaval of government after WWI and its effect on The Waste Land.  In particular I will be looking at Nicholas II and his role as Tsar of Russia before the Great War, and then the causes of his downfall and the affect on Russia because of it.  How could the third richest man in the world (according to Forbes magazine in 200 unable to command his army and handle the political turmoil of Russia?  Was he sick, or was he taken down in a proper Frazier Killing of the King fassion?  Was then this the direct cause of food and fuel shortage, as well as the strikes and demonstrations?  Clearly this ties into grail mythology, but I will look at The Waste Land and try to determine to what extent this political upheaval had an effect on the poem. 

A Game of Chess

    Eliot, in his poem of 433 lines, makes extensive use of allusions to many works, primarily of the Western canon, to broaden the meaning and application of his own words.  These references allow Eliot to incorporate already expressed and established themes and ideas into his message without restating them in his own words and with far fewer words.  The themes have been explored and developed by the authors of the referenced works, such as Shakespeare and Ovid, so Eliot’s allusions serve as gateways through which one may access that information to supplement that which is presented directly by Eliot.
    In the second section of The Waste Land, “A Game of Chess,” Eliot makes two allusions that greatly aids perception of the scene described.  The first part of this section describes a queen sitting upon “a burnished throne”(Eliot 77) in a lavish room.  The room is decadent and full of sensuous and savory scents.  The references that aid in the understanding of this scene are the references to Milton’s Paradise Lost at line 98 and the reference to the myth of Philomela and Tereus at line 99.  The latter allusion is to a story in which a woman, Philomela, is raped by her sister’s husband, King Tereus.  The king cut her tongue out after raping her so that she could not tell of his crime.  The former allusion is to the “sylvan scene” of prelapsarian Eden when Satan described the scene in the Garden before inducing the fall of Eve.  This is a rape of Eve, despite not being one of a carnal nature.  The reference to Satan is present before line 98 as well with the mention of a golden Cupidon at line 80, the form Satan took to fool Uriel into directing him to Eden.  At the end of this first part of “A Game of Chess,” the queen depicted begins to become very nervous, “her hair / spread out in fiery points”(108-09), then “savagely still”(110).  The “footsteps shuffled on the stair”(107) suggest conflict, and considering the two references to rapes, that of Philomela and that of Eve, a rape here would explain the spread out hair followed by the savage stillness.

Evolving Gender Roles

My final paper will explore the change and evolution of gender roles at the turn of the 20th century and into the Great War period.  We, together, will set sail on a journey navigating this morphing of the female societal role as exemplified by such groups as the Gibson girls of the 1890s and the flappers of the 1910s and particularly the 1920s and exemplified by the women’s suffrage movements in America and Britain.  This course across the seas of the early 20th century will lash together the evolution of the role of the woman in America and Western Europe with Eliot’s overarching theme of the relationship of man and woman in The Waste Land.  The journey will be both long and laborious, but we shake our sails to its challenge and set our compass to the crossroads where The Waste Land meets the balance of male and female ideals in Eliot’s time

In non-Frazerian summation, the goal of my paper and research is to impart a better understanding of how Eliot in The Waste Land is responding to and reflecting the changing roles and relationships of the genders during his lifetime and what these changes were.

Tags: gender, 20th century woman, The Waste Land, Eliot

Paper Topic

                For my final paper, I will be exploring the ideas of Carl Jung, influential theorist and psychiatrist of the early twentieth century.  Some of his most notable ideas include the concepts of the archetype, the collective unconscious, and synchronicity.  These notions will be explored in the course of the paper, which will ultimately relate them back to T.S. Eliot’s ideas behind the composition and structure of “The Wasteland.”  The paper will also look at Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and explore the similarities between Eliot’s ideas about literature and Jung’s conception of the nature of the human psyche.  A main argument will be a comparison between Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and Eliot’s idea that every new composition is a new voice added to a sea of other voices and ideas from past works.  This idea applies to the overall structure of “The Wasteland,” with its narrative fragments and numerous citations of passages from other works.

Paper Topic

Before I start my paragraph, I would like to thank Mr. Green for his advice and guidance through out the term paper process. I have decided to write a report on trench warfare during WWI. As you all know, trench warfare was the main tactic used by all forces to slowly kill off the opponent. I will then link the significance and influence of trench warfare to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. My goal by the end of the paper is to have my readers gain a better understanding of The Waste Land.

Film’s Effects on Culture in the Early 1900s

     During and after World War I, film was for the first time able to bring the “glories” of war home to the civilian populace. It is said jokingly that nothing is real until it’s made into a movie. This aphorism rings true as directors defied popular opinion by portraying the futility of trench warfare. It would have been hard for Americans to truly realize the damage their soldiers were witnessing in foreign countries. Filmmakers were able to bring home the carnage and hopelessness that were the front lines. Film’s roots as an artistic medium were reemphasized; it was able to conduct the human activity of war and have it be more widespread and truly comprehended than any previous method.

Eliot in The Wasteland and The Hollow Men was able to capture the same emotion and intensity as film. Eliot, though, is able to give a conclusion to the first-hand knowledge film gave to the people. His works then could be viewed as a reaction to the new medium and the comprehesion brought with it.