The Waste Land remains a cultural and social barometer. It is a work that invites responses from each generation of readers, revealing the values of that generation through the shifting hinterlands of appreciation and critique the poem inevitably provokes. Each generation has its own Eliot, too, and this has been no more the case than when the thorny question of Eliot's politics moves into view, especially accusations of misogyny and anti-Semitism. If Eliot remains a revered figure of the twentieth century, his authority has been rocked by the antiquated views which punctuated his thinking at certain stages of his life.

Concurrently, readers, above all students in the classroom, frequently now demand that the social and political content, contexts and contemporary resonances of ‘great’ works be taken seriously. The Waste Land is a prime example. Megan Quigley's 2019 edited cluster for Modernism/modernity, ‘Reading “The Waste Land” with the #MeToo Generation’, provides compelling evidence of students’ perspectives in recent years. Quigley's account of the difference between her own experiences as a student and that of the cohorts coming before her now is illuminating:

What is notable is the demand to blend what we might call traditional Eliot scholarship – hunting for allusions, attempting to pin down meaning – with socially engaged readings that evaluate hitherto neglected or overshadowed topics in Eliot's work. What is equally intriguing, though, is that there is still this demand to read Eliot at all. As Quigley notes, Eliot's reputation has unavoidably suffered a decline: