In what way was "The Waste Land" central to its time in both theme and technique? What examples illustrate this?

"The Waste Land" reflects T. S. Eliot's perception of the state of the world after World War I. He sees the warfare among the European nations as an emblem of the fragmentation of tradition in the face of modernity. Old beliefs and traditional art forms break down. This fragmentation is seen in the disintegration of iambic pentameter and the bricolage of fragmentary quotations ("These fragments I have shored against my ruins") that Eliot uses in assembling his poem. These fragments, ranging from quotations from Dante and the Upanishads through phrases from newspapers emphasize Eliot's vision of society which lacks a coherent central structure. 

For Eliot, who was an Anglo-Catholic, the moment of modernity is analogous to the moment when the fertility god has died and is buried in winter (as described in Weston's From Ritual to Romance, which he references in his notes), but has not yet been reborn in spring, or when Jesus has died on the Cross and has not yet returned. He illustrates this concept in the lines:

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.

This is an image of death, sterility, and desolation which can only be cured if the Fisher King is made whole or Christ returns. For Eliot, modernity and secularism exist in this space of sterility.