The Waste Land (part 1)

As many of you can probably can agree, reading "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot, was no easy task. This poem is fourteen pages long in our text book and has a lot of words that you must read the meanings of. Although this poem was so long, I found that as I got started it became easier and easier to read. I began getting lost in the words of Eliot. In the beginning I was a little confused, each stanza was so different. I felt that it was seperate pieces from different stories in each one. As I read on I kept learning more and more about these four different stories. Although I was still confused each story was becoming a little more clear but no less overwhelming. I found this very difficult to understand as to what Eliot was trying to accomplish. I hope that after today's class I will be more comfortable with what this poem really means. As of now I feel that this poem is four different poems in one trying to get a meaning across that I am yet to understand. I would like to talk about my favorite part thus far in my understanding. I like the part of the poem where it talks about the tarot cards and that the charecters cards was not part of the deck. I find this to be creepy but so mysterious at the same time. What did Eliot mean by this? Is the charecter a ghost? Or is the ghost really in story/stanza four of this poem. I have yet so much to learn about "The Waste Land".