Editing Gerontion (section)

===Religion===
To Donald J. Childs, the poem attempts to present the theme of Christianity from the viewpoint of the modernist individual with various references to the Incarnation and salvation. Childs believes that the poem moves from Christmas Day in line 19 ("in the Juvescence of the year") to the [[Crucifixion]] in line 21 as it speaks of "depraved May" and "flowering Judas". He argues that Gerontion contemplates the "paradoxical recovery of freedom through slavery and grace through sin".<ref name="Childs"/> In line 20, the narrator refers to [[Jesus Christ|Jesus]] as "Christ the tiger", which emphasizes judgment rather than compassion, according to Jewel Spears Brooker in ''Mystery and Escape: T. S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism''.<ref name=Brooker>Brooker, Jewel Spears. ''Mystery and Escape: T. S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism''. Univ of Massachusetts Press (1996) p. 99</ref>

Peter Sharpe states that "Gerontion" is the poem that shows Eliot "taking on the mantle of his [[New England]] [[Puritan]] forebears" as Gerontion views his life as the product of sin. Sharpe suggests that [[Jesus Christ|Christ]] appears to Gerontion as a scourge because he understands that he must reject the "dead world" to obtain the salvation offered by Christianity.<ref name=Sharpe>Sharpe, Petter. ''The Ground of our Beseeching'' p. 95</ref> However, other critics disagree; Russell Kirk believes that the poem is "a description of life devoid of faith, drearily parched, it is cautionary".<ref name="Kirk p. 54">Kirk 54</ref> Marion Montgomery writes that Gerontion's "problem is that he can discover no vital presence in the sinful shell of his body".<ref>Montgomery 76</ref>

In ''The American T. S. Eliot'', Eric Whitman Sigg describes the poem as "a portrait of religious disillusion and despair", and suggests that the poem, like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", explores the relationship between action and inaction and their consequences.<ref name=Sigg>Sigg, Eric Whitman. ''The American T. S. Eliot''Cambridge University Press (1989) p. 171</ref> To this, [[Alfred Kazin]] adds that Eliot, especially in "Gerontion" shows that "it is easier for God to devour us than for us to partake of Him in a seemly spirit."<ref name=Kazin>Kazin, Alfred. ''An American Procession'' Harvard University Press (1996) p. 19</ref> To Kazin, it is religion, not faith that Eliot describes through the narrative of "Gerontion", and that religion is important not because of its spirituality but because of "the 'culture' it leaves". Kazin suggests that in lines 33–36 the poem attempts to show how Eliot tells his generation that history is "nothing but human depravity":
:After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now	
:History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors	
:And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
:Guides us by vanities.<ref name=Kazin/>
Nasreen Ayaz argues that in the fourth movement of the poem, Gerontion shows that his loss of faith in Christianity has resulted in an emotional sterility to go along with the physical. In that stanza he remembers a former mistress and regrets that he no longer has the ability to interact with her on a physical level. The "closer contact" sought by the narrator represents both the physical longing of intimacy as well as the emotional connection he previously had with the woman described in the poem.<ref name=Ayaz>Ayaz, Nasreen. ''Anti-T. S. Eliot Stance in Recent Criticism''. Sarup & Sons (2004) p. 17</ref>

In lines 17–19, Gerontion alludes to the Pharisees' statement to Christ in [[Book of Matthew|Matthew]] 12:38 when they say "Master, we would see a sign from thee."<ref name=kjv>''King James Bible''. Matthew 12:38</ref> The narrator of the poem uses these words in a different manner:

:Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign!"
:The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
:Swaddled with darkness.
James Longenbach argues that these lines show that Gerontion is unable to extract the spiritual meaning of the Biblical text because he is unable to understand words in a spiritual sense: "Gerontion's words have no metaphysical buttressing, and his language is studded with puns, words within words. The passage on history is a series of metaphors that dissolve into incomprehensibility".<ref name=Longenbach>Longenbach, James. ''Modernist Poetics of History: Pound, Eliot, and the Sense of the Past''. Princeton: Princeton UP (1987)</ref>