"A Heap of Broken Images" is a line from TS Eliot's poem, The Wasteland. It appears in the first section,
"The Burial of the Dead", line 22. Here is the stanza:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no
relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Caution: Literary Analysis Ahead
So what does this mean? I don't know. But I can take some educated guesses, as a lit person with a penchant
for the school of symbolic formalist criticism (I can hear my audience dropping like flies with that disclosure of myself).
In Eliot's notes on the poem, he acknowledges that the phrase "son of man" was taken from Ezekiel 2.1:
And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. And the spirit
entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me. And he said unto
me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their
fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day. For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do
send thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD. And they, whether they will hear, or whether
they will forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them. And
thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou
dost dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house.
And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: for they are most rebellious.
But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat
that I give thee. And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; And he
spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and
woe.
We know that Ezekiel was a priest in the temple of Jerusalem, that he had a wife, but was exiled and lost everything
at age 26. But instead of wallowing in despair, Ezekiel reasoned that because even though everything he knew was overturned,
it was because he needed to turn to finding fulfillment within himself and his spirituality.
Eliot was not the only artist who has used Ezekiel. Treading over into territory I'm more familar with,
the Indigo Girls also used Ezekiel as the subject of one of their songs on their album, "
Rites of Passage".
So what does all of this mean in terms of the show? That I've got my work cut out for me to make it funny,
I think that's what it is.
