r at the end of the first passage when the speaker is in the unreal city. This unreal city is the modern Paris or London. This modern society is depicted as a limbo where the citizens are in no pain but condemned to no chance at fulfillment.
             As the speaker is watching the people pass, he sees Stetson, a man who was in the war with him. The context of this scene would imply that Stetson was a soldier in the First World War. However, the speaker implies that he was in the Punic war with him two thousand years before this scene takes place. Here Eliot suggests that all the wars are one war by blurring the lines of time. The speaker then asks Stetson about a corpse that he buried, bringing us back to the title of the section "The Burial of the Dead." Here Eliot quotes John Webster's play The White Devil where one brother is burying the body of his brother whom he killed. Eliot also makes reference to the Dog that might interfere with the resurrection. This dog is the Dog Star Sirus who follows his slain master Orion through the sky. In Egyptian mythology Sirus is responsible for the flooding of the Nile River and the subsequent fertility of the Nile river valley. The reference to Webster's play can also be interpreted as a comment on the evil nature of man. The first biblical murder was the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. At the end of this section Eliot writes "hypocrite, double, my brother" letting the reader know that the character of Stetson is really the reader that the speaker is referring to.
             This meditation on death is a reflection on what has been lost. The world is slowly withering away like the cursed kingdom of the Fisher King. The Fisher King has lost everything and sits contemplating his once great kingdom. Throughout his depression and loss, there is still some hope that what was lost can be regained. The Fisher King can be redeemed and healed if only some great hero w...