Symbol Analysis
Time keeps on slippin'… Whether he's mentioning a specific time ("six o'clock" in line 3 or "four and five and six o'clock" in line 42) or commenting on the transitions between morning, evening, and night, the speaker is preoccupied with the time. The stanzas are very specific about the way we measure time's passage throughout the day, but Eliot doesn't just use the concept of time to indicate what is going on in the poem. In stanza 2 he tells us that time is just a "masquerade" (19); because we are always doing the same things, nothing actually changes. And in the time-travelling moment at the end of the poem in stanza 4, we see ancient women gathering fuel, facing the same struggles that we face today. In the end, time is just an illusion.