Presentation! East Coker

See Sam's blog for photos of our fabulous presentation. I think it was pretty effective in explaining our ideas about the poem...except for the lack of time. For my section, I definitely cut out some things to make sure my remaining group members had at least a few minutes!
A few things I didn't say you might want to know, and an overall summary:
My section of East Coker begins in the war: "Beneath the bleeding hands we feel..." Eliot wrote East Coker after the right before the second World War, hence being "between two wars." Even the hospitals in the war were bloody, terrifying areas during the war, as demonstrated by the first few lines of my section (starting on page 29). Here, Eliot is also saying that the role of the doctor and nurse, who are injured themselves ("If we obey the dying nurse") is to make the dying soldier as comfortable as possible: "to remind of our, and Adam's curse." Here Eliot references the Bible, the first of many times throughout my section.
Despite the desolation of the war, Eliot introduces the Biblical idea that "to be restored, our sickness must grow worse." In other words, we must die to truly live, a Christian doctrine.
The Catholics believe that communion is the Eucharist, the ultimate transformation, the drinking of God's blood and the eating of his flesh. "The Body of Christ, given for you...the Blood of Christ, shed for you" (so they say at the Lutheran church of my childhood). This is connected to the final paragraph of stanza IV in East Coker: "The dripping blood our only drink/The bloody flesh our only food." The next few lines relate to Good Friday, which fits with the rest of East Coker, as it was originally published on Easter: "In spite of which we like to think/That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--/Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
The first few lines of stanza V and the end of my section relate to Eliot's mid-life crisis of sorts: "So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years--twenty years largely wasted." This reminded me of Dante's famous lines from The Inferno: "Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood."
Eliot's mid-life crisis is also related to his disillusionment caused by the war, and by the fruitlessness of l'entre deux guerres, French for between two wars.
Overall, my section of East Coker was a reflection of Eliot's sufferings caused by the war, but by his continuing faith despite this. This part of the section sort of brings the reader back down to Earth, before reminding them of their rising after death.