Explication of "The Winter Evening Settles Down"

Abstract

T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Winter Evening Settles Down", tells about the time period of which the poem was written in 1917. During this time, World War I was occurring, there was an early economic depression that preceded the Great Depression of the late 1920s into the 1930s, and it was a wide-held belief that this country had lost touch with the people and the country's modernity. The country was in status quo instead of coming up with new ideas to help. Eliot's imagery within the poem helps describe the feeling of her time in 1917.

One of the ways Eliot uses imagery to help intensify what was happening at that time occurs in the first sentence: "The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passageways." Here, Eliot is describing a winter day coming to an end with some sort of smell being present throughout. One assumption the reader could make is that the day being described is very cold, as winter is the colder season situated between autumn and spring in northern latitude areas. Furthermore, there is also reference to the evening, the latter part of the day from sunset to bedtime, as having settled down, or coming to a close. As a result of the days becoming darker more quickly, one could also assume that Eliot is referencing the evening as having started earlier than what it would have in the summer, for example.