T.S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land explores themes of disillusionment, disgust, the breakdown of relationships, and spiritual emptiness after World War I (1914–18). In a series of fragmentary vignettes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Holy Grail, it portrays a sterile world with panicky fears and barren lusts and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption.