The passages about the Unreal City in “The Waste Land” suggest a correlation between external appearance and internal moral states by characterizing the city both in terms of the “brown fog” that surrounds it, as well as in terms of the deadened state of its population: the civilians are described as shades or revenants, and the portrayal is interspersed with references to Dante’s Inferno. This correspondence between form (i.e., external states) and content (i.e., internal states) is also reflected in two characters in particular, namely, Mr. Eugenides and Lil— these characters are portrayed as being immoral due to their sexual activity, as well as being described in physically unappealing terms. And just as, in What the Thunder Said, Eliot…show more content… This correspondence is significant, as it creates a kind of equivocation between ethics and aesthetics; while the decline of art and morality have mutually dragged down society as a whole, we can potentially use this connection to redeem or vindicate our modern…show more content… In line 60, there is a mention of an "Unreal City.” The phrase "Unreal City" itself is a reference to Charles Baudelaire, who was a nineteenth-century poet from France whose collection, Fleurs du Mal (1857), brought light to unsavory sexual practices and indulgent lifestyles of the poet's time. The name serves as a kind of double entendre: it suggests that the city is an ideal of some kind, but it is also hints at an artificial or masked quality to the city. This second interpretation is supported by the "brown fog" that covers the city, demonstrating that it is dirty and polluted by human influence. Not only is the external appearance of the city unappealing, but the internal state of affairs is described in deprecating terms: the civilians are characterized as a crowd of people flowing over the London Bridge, where the narrator claims that "I had not thought death had undone so many" (63). Here, Eliot is referring to the circles of hell in Dante's Inferno and is comparing modern life to living in hell. The people in this scene are also sighing and staring at the ground in front of their feet—this is another allusion to the Inferno. This description of the citizens’ body language suggests a kind of dissatisfaction or miserable submission,
