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Gerontion is a complex picture in which the technique is difficult to describe. A situation is suggested, characters come and go, conclusions are drawn from thoughts. There are plenty of allusions. The theme of Gerontion is the breakdown of culture, religion and civilization. The poem meditates on history through the consciousness of an old man. It deals with the absence of heroic action in the modern world and its loss of faith and inability to learn from history. The modern atrophy of the senses and the decay is presented through the use of the symbolic mode - water, rain and sea representing spiritual vitality and rock, sand and stone standing for deadness and spiritual insensitivity. The tiger is first used to represent Christ's power and beauty, and later to suggest Christ's destructive and punitive aspect. Some of the imaginary characters have a symbolic value in representing the decay and neurosis of the modern world. Geronaion himself represents the impotence of the age.
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| Gerontion Theme |
In Gerontion, Eliot uses the technique of the psychological novel, the process of free association of the movie form. Images of the sea with its salt spray and the uncontrollable wind symbolizing spiritual vitality are contrasted with symbols of spiritual insensitivity which suffuse the poem, till it ends with the significant thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
The poem is in the form of a dramatic monologue. The form is highly suitable for the personalization of Eliot's personal impressions on what has gone wrong with the human condition. Indeed the poem has correctly been called a triumph of transforming a set of personal beliefs into an expression of universal validity.