If René Descartes' "Cogito Ergo Sum" embodies the essence of what it means to be a unified and rational Cartesian subject, then the "heap of broken images" by TS Eliot embraces its fragmented and alienated (post)modern counterpart. The message of this phrase resonates throughout the poem: from its title, “The Wasteland,” to its final mantra, “Shantih shantih shantih.” All the words, phrases and sentences (or simply images) that make up this poem seem, in the words of Lévi-Strauss, "to be zero symbolic value [and the signifier] can take any required value", meaning that images Eliot's uses have no fixed meaning and therefore evoke ideas that are thought-provoking and need to be studied (quoted in Derrida 10). One idea that critics agree on is, as Paul Muldoon notes in his introduction to "The Waste Land," that "it is almost impossible to think of a world in which The Waste Land does not exist" (Eliot 2013, p. , he further adds that the poem was written in an “oppressive climate” (p. 19). However, while Barry, in his chapter on postmodernism, asserts that "the modernist deplores fragmentation while the postmodernist celebrates it" (81), Muldoon draws the metaphor of "The Waste Land" as "a variety poster in a music hall, a this is added on the fly, and…[can be] read as a vaudeville show.” Although the mood in which this poem is written is certainly dismal, TS Eliot does indeed celebrate the possibilities of highly modernist art. In an attempt to analyze this highly modernist poem, this article begins with one of the beginnings of TS Eliot's work: "The Waste Land", this is indeed not the only beginning of the text. According to Bennett and Royle, “a middle of paper …literary llude, as this analysis of “The Waste Land” makes clear, this poem (and perhaps this essay) truly is one. massive "heap of broken images", however, leaning forward and working while reading, one can say that this poem is surely a lament of modern society, however, the way in which the artist expresses this pain is undoubtedly a celebration of the art form. Works Cited Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 2009. Print. Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. An introduction to literature, criticism and theory. Fourth edition. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2009. Print. Derrida, Jacques. Writing and difference, trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, pp 278-294Eliot, TS and Paul Muldoon. The wasteland. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013. Print.