T. S. Eliot and the Return of the Soldier: Re-gendering Nostos in “The Waste Land”

T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land transfigures life in London after the Great War, creatively engaging with the theme of the return of the soldier in its topical sense. In Part II of the poem (“A Game of Chess”), Eliot reveals the domestic crisis that the return of the demobilised soldier named Albert may cause. “A Game of Chess” is also concerned with the troubled homecoming of the unnamed, shell-shocked soldier who fought in rats’ alley by exposing the strain of his psychological crisis on his marriage life. By engaging with the literary trope of nostos (“homecoming”) that originates in Homer’s Odyssey, this article examines how Eliot’s treatment of the soldier’s return revisits the archetype of return from war in modern conditions. Through reading these passages, I investigate how the heroic, masculine narrative of nostos, homecoming in the classical epic tradition, is reframed in the domestic space associated with femininity in the modern metropolis.