This paper traces the personal experience belying Eliot's poetry after the First World War. It focuses on Eliot's remembrance of his friend Jean Verdenal who died at Gallipoli, and Eliot's marriage to Vivien whose attacks of hysteria linked him to the trauma symptoms of soldiers. Eliot's traumatic experience of the war was a consequence of his paralysed inability to participate in a historical event which determined every aspect of his life. He attempted to overcome this disempowerment by simulating an active role in history, claiming the home front as part of the battlefield, and in failing to enlist in the US Navy at the close of the war. I conclude the paper with a demonstration of how these experiences contributed to his poetry, by focusing on 'Ode on Independence Day, July 4th 1918'. I argue that the poem's resistance to interpretation is symptomatic of Eliot's dual concealment and confession of his personal relation to historical events.
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