The title of the novel is a phrase from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land,[7] which appears at line 386 of "What the Thunder Said", part V of the poem:[8]
In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one.
— T. S. Eliot, "V. What the Thunder Said", The Waste Land. (Lines 385–390)
Despite the section's theme of the power of destruction over growth, it is one of the more jubilant and reviving images used in "What the Thunder Said". Fifteen lines from this section of The Waste Land are quoted to begin the novel, forming its epigraph, to which is added the epigrammatic quotation: "It is by the failures and misfits of a civilization that one can best judge its weaknesses", an aphorism from an unstated source.[5]
