The famous poem “The Wasteland” can be linked to a novel named “The Road” in many ways, it’s main connections would be the negative descriptive words of the surroundings. The nature is one feature that stands out the most; an example of this would be “dried”, it is used in the Wasteland to describe a “dried tuber” which is apart of nature, this links well The Road atithe man and the boy uses “dried limbs” to create fires to stay warm. However, in “The Road” the dried limbs are really useful to them, it is apart of their survival since the situation for them throughout the novel was tough and fighting for survival. Another nature related description that is a connection to The Road too would be “shower of rain”, this relates signifcantly as the weather throughout The Road seems to be between rain and snow. The wasteland, the weather conditions doesn’t seem to be as bad as the novel; that to every negative word it has a positive in the next line. For “shower” of rain, the next line would be “sunshine”.
One other connection between The Wasteland and The Road, is its statements and negative words. In The Wasteland at the end of stanza 3, “One must be so careful these days” this is crucial especially in The Road as the state they are in, they cannot risk chances of trusting people or letting anyone else travel with the man and the son. The negative word would be “cruellest”, this relates to The Road as the boy felt like his dad was being the cruellest when he left the man completely naked and with normal in the middle of the road.
There are also verbs within The Wasteland that can be related to The Road too. An example of this would be covering, this can be related to The road in two ways; one would be that the father is always covering and protecting his son through everything they went through, another would be the physical blankets that the man finds and he always hands it to his son first before covering himself with a blanket too. Second verb would be feeding, its connection to The Road would be similar to the word covering aswell. The father is constantly finding food to feed the boy and himself, but he keeps the boy as his main priority; towards the end where he knows he will not make it any longer, he makes the boy eat their last can of food all by himself.
React!