Newspapers
We first see newspapers in stanza 1, where they litter an empty lot. Later in stanza 3, a woman uses strips of them to curl her hair, which gets her fingers dirty with the ink. Stanza 4 has the new...
The Soul
At the end of the poem, the soul floats between the buildings and underneath our feet, but no one seems to notice it. The soul symbolizes something easily ignored: our conscience, something the inh...
Garbage and Grime
The poem returns, again and again, to imagery of litter and filth. Eliot begins the poem by describing the city as "burnt out," "smoky" and full of "grimy scraps, " but he doesn't leave the dirt on...
Light
Changes in light indicate changes in the poem. In stanza 1, we end with "and then the lighting of the lamps" (13) which is set apart from the rest of the stanza and moves us from the dark of the st...
Time
Time keeps on slippin'… Whether he's mentioning a specific time ("six o'clock" in line 3 or "four and five and six o'clock" in line 42) or commenting on the transitions between morning, evening,...