Literary Techniques, Summary, Form, and Sounds Used in 'Death by Water' by T.S Eliot

Poetry
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Poetry
T. S. Eliot is a renowned poet owing to several publications under the author's name. Critical to the debate is the fact that one of the publications from the author is "Death by Water" which is the shortest of the five poems published in "The Waste land". It is important to note that "Death by Water" is a modern poem because it was published in 1921 (Elimam, 2015 pp.25). Further, the speaker of the poem is not mentioned in the poem. However, it could be deduced that the speaker in the poem is a sailor because the speaker collected a dead body from the ocean. It is notable that there are some rhyming words in the poem because of the words Jew and You, which are found in the last stanza. Analogously, the words swell and fell found in the second lines of the first and second stanzas exhibit rhyme. The upcoming paragraphs analyze the poem by discussing literary techniques, adjectives used, a summary of the poem, form, and sounds used in the poem.
The first line of the poem introduces the audience to a character who was dead for a fortnight and is known as Phlebas the Phoenician. Similarly, the second and third lines indicate that Phlebas is not interested in worldly things because he is dead. Further, the fourth line indicates that Phlebas was killed by the waters of the ocean while the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines indicate that Phlebas pondered about his life just before dying. Ultimately, the last three lines inform the audience to learn from the Phlebas’ death and stop being proud, because death is unpredictable and inevitable. According to Khan, Mansor, and Khan (2015, pp.618), Eliot uses allusion when he mentions about Phlebas’ youth. Analogously, Eliot uses water as a symbol (a turning point) that causes Phlebas to think about his life. It follows that the water is a symbol of purification because it sobered up Phlebas’ thoughts. It follows that Eliot used Allusion and symbolism, which contributed to the theme of pride because it they provided Phlebas with a platform to ...