While Persephone is in Hades, earth lacks vibrancy and color. Nature becomes non-existent as portrayed in the poem. Eliot sees earth as motionless and dead. However brief, Eliot acknowledges this transition of seasons when he discusses the children singing and dancing around the cactus. Life is black and white.
Life is plain, simple, and boring.
Like rats, we are rodents who do the bare minimum in order to survive. We do not care if we get hurt in the process because we are void of emotion and feeling. This stuffed image relates to the second epigraph that opens the poem. This conspiracy was led by English Catholics who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, King James I, his queen, and his oldest son. Guy Fawkes, a Roman Catholic, was one of the leaders who participated in this plot in anger of James' refusal to grant further religious toleration.