The waste land of the poem is modern European culture, which had come too far from its spiritual roots. Eliot alludes to various ancient religions as well as to the medieval legend of the Holy Grail, finding in them the common thread of the mythic cycle of the death and resurrection of gods. Only through the death of this king and his replacement by a new, young, and vigorous knight can the land be restored to fertility. Eliot's poem, depicts modern society as being in the infertile part of the cycle.
Human beings are isolated, and sexual relations are sterile and meaningless.
Because of the variety and relative obscurity of Eliot's allusions, readers must work through the poem's footnotes several times to appreciate it, but the general impression of isolation, decadence, and sterility comes through in every reading. The poem presents a series of conversations or scenes that lead through the wasteland to a moment of hope, the expectation of rain, at the end. The sections are numbered to indicate shifts of scene and speaker. I youth as a lovelier, freer, more romantic time. Then the poem returns to a fragmentary love scene of the past, perhaps the countess's.