The remaining part of the passage which depicts "thunder" alludes to the moment at which Jesus died on the cross. According to the gospels of the Bible, the curtains of the temple were torn, the ground shook, and tombs opened when Christ died. Again, the narrator must identify the death of Christ because in "The Waste Land," no one seems to notice it. The use of this passage exposes the oblivion of the people of "The Waste Land" to the pain and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. .
Eliot includes other Biblical references in "The Waste Land" so portray the lack of spirituality in the modern world. For example, in the first section of "The Waste Land," the narrator addresses the reader by saying, "Son of Man, / You cannot say, or guess for you know only / A heap of broken images- (20-22). This is a direct allusion to Ezekiel 2:1 when God addresses Ezekiel by saying, ""Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you."" This passage is significant because it calls attention to the sinfulness of human beings. In the Bible, God calls Ezekiel "son of man" to acknowledge the distance between the omnipotence of God and the inferiority of humans. In a like manner, Eliot uses this allusion to remind readers that human beings are indeed inferior to God. This is also an acknowledgment that the people of "The Waste Land" are spiritually dead because they are separated from the superiority of God. More importantly, the narrator uses the second person in this passage, and this gives the reader the impression that the narrator is directly addressing the reader. Consequently, this forces the reader to acknowledge his/her inferiority, and it also impels the reader to question whether or not he/she "know[s] only / A heap of broken images" (21-22). Another passage which alludes to The Bible in portraying the lack of spirituality in "The Waste Land" is the one which states: "Who is the third who walks always beside you?" (360).
