When Breath Becomes Air

Paul reads this book-length poem during his undergraduate program, as he studies English literature and biology. He says it “resonated profoundly, relating meaninglessness and isolation, the desperate quest for human connection” (31). It is an important poem because it holds so much potential for Paul.

Eliot began writing The Wasteland in 1919, in the wake of WWI. As one of the most famous examples of modernist literature, the poem has destabilized meter and structure, is thick with references (both accessible and not), and often ambiguously shifts perspective or voice. Eliot’s poem portrays a world in disarray, a world somehow elusive and incomprehensible to him.

That this poem resonates with Paul comes as no surprise, especially later in the book, when it crops up numerous times, both directly and indirectly. He recites the poem before the clinical trial and thinks of it before giving over control of his medical plan to Emma. Paul is also “lost in a featureless wasteland of his own mortality” (148). Eventually, however, “I saw not an empty wasteland but something simpler: a blank page on which I would go on” (196). This passage marks the birth of Cady.