# Talk:The Dry Salvages

I am disappointed to read this on the current page: 
The narrator compares rivers to a "strong brown god" that humanity tames especially in city life, while the sea is powerful, mysterious, and filled with many discordant "voices" that embody both creative and destructive forces of time and nature beyond human control
After all, Eliot suggests that the river, forgotten by mankind, remains dangerous. In which case it is a metaphor for mankind's belief that life is controllable. Here is the exact passage:
"ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting."
I hesitated making a change because I have no literary authority — am merely an intellectual who has read this poem deeply — especially seeing the river as that thing mankind invents process, bureaucracy, procedure, and mythology thinking we can control. 
In this case, the sea is a fully different type of uncertainty — yet both are encountered by humanity. Dsgarnett (talk) 23:16, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I fully agree. I'm also interested in how water (in both cases) reflects the uncertainties around us... That the river considers uncertainty which emerges from within us while the sea seems to reflect uncertainties which come from outside us.
This seems to make particular sense because the human attempts to tame internally rising uncertainty through dams and bridges reflects religions, moralities, and other paradigms adopted by humans hoping to control the natural uncertainties of life. For example, certain Enlightenment philosophers suggested "if only" all human acted rationally and logically then we would have a human utopia. The French Revolution showed the the river had remained "waiting, watching and waiting."
Isaiah Berlin was discussing this in the 1940s and it is possible (perhaps likely) that his focus also influenced Eliot. Dsgarnett (talk) 19:49, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
I also want to add my disagreement with this statement:  "The poem discusses the nature of time and what humanity's place is within time. Life is described metaphorically as travelling in a boat and humanity's fixation on science and future gain keeping the travellers from reaching their destination. Within the poem, Eliot invokes the image of Krishna to emphasise the need to follow the divine will, instead of seeking personal gain."
This is a portion of the Dry Salvages. But the discussion reaches far more deeply into human experience. It seems arbitrary to say Eliot was emphasizing the need to following the divine will. More accurately, that it is mankind's attempt to exert complete control over the future which leads to human disaster. Seen as a poem about uncertainty vs our attempts to fully control fits with many of the discussions present at the time — especially the resurgence of Technocratic myths, the pure misleading logic of communism, and the rise of managerialism in business and in political works like that of James Burnham and Orwell's excellent responses to Burnham.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dsgarnett (talk • contribs) 19:52, 27 May 2025 (UTC)