Son of man

This section of the poem is set in a desert waste land.

"Son of man" is a translation of a Hebrew phrase meaning "mortal" or "human being"in the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel. It is the phrase used by God to address Ezekiel.

Ezekiel prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians: "your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken." (Ezekiel 6).

Prophecy is a major theme of the poem: we have already met the Sibyl and Ezekiel, and we will soon be introduced to Madame Sosostris, a rather dodgy fortune-teller.

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Ezekiel also has a vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, a desert covered in human skeletons. God tells him to call the bones back to life, and when he does so, flesh and muscle is returned to them. The bodies are then brought back to life by a breath of wind. The vision represents the revival of the nation of Israel: there is an obvious link with the other resurrection images in The Burial of the Dead.


Interestingly, the imagery of bones and wind appears in each subsequent part of the poem.
 In A Game of Chess :

I think we are in rats' alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

  “What is that noise?”

                          The wind under the door.

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”

In The Fire Sermon:

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear

In Death By Water:

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers

In What the Thunder Said:

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

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