T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," Part 4: The Quester

The protagonist of the Fisher King legend is not the Fisher King himself, but an outsider who enters the Waste Land on a quest for the Holy Grail. Although the Quester may not realize it, his destiny is not only to attain the Holy Grail, but to deliver the Waste Land and its inhabitants from their suffering. In The Waste Land, however, Eliot strips the Quester’s character from any of the religious goals found in traditional romance cycles. Without spiritual initiative, his journey, like that of all the personae in The Waste Land, is one traveled in a world of secular humanism gone stagnant. Unfortunately, the Quester’s ignorance is not confined to his lack of identity, but also of the actions required to fulfill his quest.  

In this journey, the Quester fails to recognize that he is also a victim of the curse that has befallen the Waste Land and its ruler. His fate is therefore intertwined with the Waste Land, and he also is in need of healing and redemption. Only when the Quester realizes his role in the Waste Land, and the special, ritualistic measures he can take to remove the curse upon it, will the Fisher King be healed and the Waste Land restored. 

The Quester’s journey is not only made in the effort to heal the Waste Land and the Fisher King, it is also a quest to overcome his own shortcomings, through enduring trials in “the Chapel Perilous.” This Chapel was part of the healing ritual, which would prove the Quester’s worthiness by testing his courage with horrific images. The Chapel Perilous was the final stage of the Grail quest in medieval romance cycles, represented in The Waste Land as “the violet hour” (Eliot 750). This passage sees the narrator entering the climax of the poem, and it is here that the Quester encounters the final test before he is able to restore the land.

In some medieval romance cycles, the Quester initially fails this test through ignorance.  When he reaches the Chapel Perilous, he fails a test of virtue, making him unworthy to restore the land and its king to their former glory. In another variation of this failure, he meets the Fisher King and sees the Grail but does not take initiative to discover his role in delivering the Fisher King and the Waste Land from their suffering. 

After he is informed of his duties to the Fisher King and the Waste Land, the Quester immediately regrets his failure and promises to make things right. There is a hope, though not a guarantee that the Quester will be permitted a second chance. The inhabitants of the Waste Land hardly dare to put confidence in this hope, collectively voicing “He promised “a new start”. / I made no comment.  What should I resent?” (752). Believing that the Quester cannot procure another opportunity to save them, the Waste Land’s inhabitants accept his failure and their own miserable fate.

The Quester does not passively accept this consequence to his failure, however, and makes the possibility of a second chance a reality. Perseverance enables him to find his way back to the Chapel Perilous, and he enters it with the intention of succeeding where he had previously failed. This part of the legend illustrates that hope for deliverance is always viable in spite of all contrary forces.

In medieval versions of the legend, the Chapel Perilous is filled with horrors. Nightmarish visions attack him to test his resolve as well as courage, in order to ascertain his worthiness to restore the land. Eliot’s poem includes these horrors in the stanza where: “bats with baby faces in the violet light […] / and crawled head downward down a blackened wall” (754).

In The Waste Land, not only does the Quester endure material horrors, but he is also experiences absolute void: “voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells” (755). The Chapel Perilous itself is “the empty chapel, only the wind’s home. / It has no windows, and the door swings” (755). Enduring this concentrated amount of utter isolation allows the Quester to pass the Chapel Perilous’ test and move on toward his encounter with the Fisher King.

After the Quester has passed the test in the Chapel Perilous, he must perform a ritual to restore of the Fisher King and the Waste Land. The ritual he is required to perform is often as simple as asking a question of the Fisher King, and often regards either the Fisher King’s injury—sometimes saying “What ails you?” is sufficient—or gaining a full understanding of the Grail and its meaning. Through this ritual he overcomes the ignorance that “awful daring of a moment’s surrender / Which an age of prudence can never retract” (Eliot 755) and gains the understanding that miraculously redeems him from his initial failures and inherent weaknesses. 

At the same time the Quester gains forgiveness for his initial failure, the Fisher King and the Waste Land are freed from the curse of stagnant, relentless life. 

For the medieval versions where the Quester initially failed, it is his acceptance of his faults and perseverance to overcome them that replenishes the Waste Land’s vitality.  In The Waste Land, the protagonist accepts responsibility for his flaws, but his perseverance does not guarantee his eventual success. 

In the medieval romance cycles, the Quester is eventually victorious over his inherent flaws and the external fears he confronts in the Chapel. Although Eliot’s Quester is not so assured of victory, it is hinted at earlier in the poem. Eliot quotes Verlaine’s version of the Grail legend, Parsifal (749), which comes from a passage recording the events after the trials when the Quester has achieved the object of his mission.  

The Quester’s eventual success is accomplished—first by defeating temptation, and second by performing the healing ritual for the Fisher King. Although the Verlaine fragment is inserted into the poem before the Quester persona endures the most intense trials, it is possible that Eliot is foreshadowing the inevitability that the Quester will eventually overcome all obstacles to find a solution.  

The solution given in The Waste Land, datta, dayadhvam, and damyata (755) comes from Buddhist teachings but is also comparative to the Quester’s duties in the Grail legends. Datta, “to give,” corresponds to the Quester’s need to sacrifice his pride and desires to pass the trials of the Chapel Perilous. Dayadhvam, “to sympathize,” is the Quester’s ritualistic duty to ask the Fisher King about his injury. And finally, Damyata, “to control,” is like the control that the inhabitants of the Waste Land gain over their own lives as a result of the Quester’s victory. In this way the solution of the poem directly relates to the Quester’s actions in the medieval romance cycles.