Journey of the Magi

The Magi made their difficult journey to celebrate and honor a birth. When he recalls the event, however, the Magus, while clearly recognizing the significance of the birth, also links it to death. The two words have a special importance, since Eliot capitalizes them both (Lines 36, 38, 39) each time they appear in the third stanza. The Western reader, long accustomed to the Christian story, will likely think in this context of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that inaugurated a new era in the history of the world. However, although the death of Christ is foreshadowed in the poem by the presence of the “three trees on the low sky” (Line 24), this is not what the Magus is referring to. Instead, Death means something else to him and the other Magi. It refers not to Christ’s saving death, of which he makes no mention, but “our death” (Line 39). The Magi’s experience was like death, because even though they acknowledged the significance of the newborn child and thus became part of what was known as the new dispensation—the Christian era—when they returned home, they found themselves isolated from their community and even from a previous version of themselves.