The Hollow Men

            TS Eliot is one of the masters, one of the great “Greats” of poetry. As a young boy, he was

inspired by Edward Fitzgerald's “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” a translation of the poetry of Omar

Khayyam, and proceeded to write poetry he believed – at the time – was very depressing and

unworthy to be read by others. This sentiment, of course, would change once the man discovered

Arthur Symons's “The Symbolist Movement in Poetry”, the book that many believe finally got him

“on track,” introducing him to the likes of Jules Laforgue, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine,

Tristan Corbière: poets whom he both admired and began to want to emulate and surpass. Eliot,

quite frankly, is considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century; as the premier student of

Ezra Pound, he came into prominence through the publication of poems such as “The Wasteland,”

“The Hollow Men,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Puck,” all of which reflect his budding romance

and, of course, his eventual classification as a Modernist poet.

            TS Eliot’s style, like most poets after him, is an intensely personal one, with much of his

poetry reflecting the general tone of his life as it was at the time when he wrote it. Many of his

poems also build off of his failed first marriage to one Vivienne Haigh-Wood, of which Eliot had

only this to say: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I

wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself

(also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in

England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of

which came The Waste Land." (Eliot). And indeed, much of Eliot’s poetry during the time in which

he was married to the woman is dark and depressing in nature, quite possibly reflecting how

trapped and unhappy the man felt when attached to her.

               “The Hollow Men,” in this respect, is a poem that -- while primarily about a number of

things, both obscure and blatant -- may also be interpreted as revolving around both death and

hanging on to the past. Without paying much heed to Eliot’s fetish for obscure metaphor and

imagery hearkening back to Dante’s work, one is given a clear and concise leading

through the stages of death, as if, from Stanza II onward they are being shown the way by Charon
himself. And why only from the second stanza onward, you ask? Well, if one reads closely the first

stanza – referencing men who are filled with straw, as opposed to the empty men referenced to in

later stanzas -- is mankind itself before they are swallowed into death’skingdom, while each stanza

afterward is a slow, subtle progression into the arms of a death that is neither

anthropomorphized,condemned, or exalted. In this instance, death, in the end, simply is. It is a

natural thing, not happening with a bang but a

whimper, a slow, gentle certainty. The contrasting lines toward the end further serve to further the

distinction between the first stanza and the rest of the poem, as they emphasize a body that is

between worlds, that is: “Between the idea and the reality / between the motion and the act.”

These lines may also be interpreted as births of a sort, as many of them reference – albeit, in a

very subdued way – the things which lead to both physical conception: “Between the desire and

the spasm / Between the potency and the existence along with the lines “Between the conception

and the creation / Between the emotion and the response,” can obviously be tied to falling in love

or lust and then acting upon it, leading to the creation of life, which is the whimper at the end of the

poem. Eliot’s marriage notwithstanding, anyone else would make

this out to be a joyous occasion; but, of course, Eliot – a man already unhappy with his marriage –

sees the making of a child as the end of his life, the end of life happening, again, not with a bang

but a whimper.

               On another level, however, the poem is also about Eliot’s fetishes for obscure metaphor

and imagery. Bit by bit, one can see how the poem is influenced by such historical events as the

Gunpowder plot – “Not with a bang, but with a whimper” – and Post-war Europe under the Treaty

of Versailles -- of which Eliot was not a fan – with such lines as: “This is the dead land / This is

cactus land / Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive / The supplication of a

dead man’s hand / Under the twinkle of a fading star,” which immediately bring to mind images of

the “No Man’s Land,a term that refers to the area of ground between opposing trenches; a staple,

bloody tactic of War World I. We are also shown – albeit, again, very subtly – that the goings on of

the poem may be likened to a war having nothing to do with Post-war Europe at the time.

Throughout “The Hollow Men” one is given an intense sense of hopeless and loss, of nothingness
slowly approaching, faster and faster, an inevitable murder of self awareness and “wholeness”;

indeed, when one approaches the poem thinking that it may reference a spiritual war, lines

referencing both the hollow and stuffed men seem to take on entirely new meanings, with those

who are “stuffed” either being closer to or more like God – they are the only

things that “Behave as the wind behaves,” for example – while those who are empty are far

removed from Him, being already forsaken to Death’s cold, uncaring kingdom.

               At any rate, “The Hollow Men” is one of Eliot’s premier modernist pieces. Not only does it

throw away many of the conventions of poetry at the time – rhyme scheme, Imagism, etc, etc – it

also holds water as a generalized piece that many can find whatever meaning they want to in. It is

this way the Eliot – ever the master of personalized, near biographic poetry -- opens up his writing

to anyone and everyone, using both simple language and, at times, complex and impregnable

metaphor to get his point across. There’s an almost lyrical nature in the sheer amount of repetition

in the poem, with its final, shiver-inducing line being a primary example of what repetition can do

when done exactly right.

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After Eliot had published The Waste Land, he felt as though he had not been able to fully convey the sense
of desperation and emptiness in that work. Beginning with "Doris’s Dream Songs" and "Eyes I Last Saw in
Tears," he explored these themes, eventually uniting all such poems in The Hollow Men. The end product
is a work that, unlike The Waste Land and its ultimate chance for redemption, has only the indelible
emptiness of the hollow men as its conclusion. The hollow men are those who, in life, did not act on their
beliefs; they resisted any action at all, and as a result stagnate eternally in "the Shadow," a land in between
heaven and hell, completely isolated from both. Eliot’s allusions give a familiar literary and popular basis to
the setting, while the symbols and lyrical progression convey the futility and spiritual "brokenness" of the
men.

The poem’s initial epigraph, "Mistah Kurtz-- He dead" is the first of many allusions to Conrad’s novel, Heart
of Darkness. Eliot uses the references to draw the reader’s attention to the moral sit...
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The Hollow Men

By studymode | October 1999

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The Theme of Emptiness in "The Hollow Men"

"The Hollow Men," a poem written by T.S. Eliot shows the narrators disgust and his faithless attitude toward
all mankind. He refers to the human race as being "hollow," (1) and having a "headpiece filled with straw,"
(4) which creates the feeling and theme of emptiness. Eliot also uses allusions, symbols, and repetition as
powerful, and depressing poetic devices to make mankind seem hollow.

The theme of emptiness is clearly visible throughout the poem, and it begins in the title. "The Hollow Men"
refers to mankind being empty, and that there is no meaning to their life, and no purpose for the hollow men
to go on. IN the first section of the poem, the second stanza states "Shape without form, shade without
colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion." (11-12) Here Eliot puts strong ideas together in such a
way that they seem to cancel out each other, leaving an empty feeling . In section three, Eliot used "dead,"
(39) and "cactus" (40) to describe the setting, and "In deaths other kingdom/Walking alone," (46-47) leaves
the reader in an empty state of mind with no surroundings. When someone shouts into an empty, or wide
area, it will always echo and repeat itself until it quietly dies off. This example of emptiness is expressed in
the very last stanza of the poem, "This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the
way the world ends Not with a bang, but a whimper."

"The Hollow Men" starts out with two allusions, the first being "Mistah Kurtz-he dead," which alludes to a
quotation from Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness. In the novel, Mr. Kurtz travels to the African
jungle and realizes that he cannot handle the uncivilized society of Africa, and becomes depressed and
emotionally devolved. Mr. Kurtz was hollow due to no moral or spiritual strength, however he was not one
of the hollow men, but is one of the "lost/Violent souls." (15) The second allusion is "A penny for.

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Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri of New England descent, on Sept. 26, 1888. He
entered Harvard University in 1906, completed his courses in three years and earned a master's degree the
next year. After a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, he returned to Harvard. Further study led him to Merton
College, Oxford, and he decided to stay in England. He worked first as a teacher and then in Lloyd's Bank
until 1925. Then he joined the London publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer, becoming director when the
firm became Faber and Faber in 1929. Eliot won the Nobel prize for literature in 1948 and other major
literary awards.

Eliot saw an exhausted poetic mode being employed, that contained no verbal excitement or
original craftsmanship, by the Georgian poets who were active when he settled in London. He sought to
make poetry more subtle, more suggestive, and at the same time more precise. He learned the necessity
of clear and precise images, and he learned too, to fear romantic softness and to regard the poetic medium
rather than the poet's personality as the important factor. Eliot saw in the French symbolists how image
could be both absolutely precise in what it referred to physically and at the same time endlessly suggestive
in the meanings it set up because of its relationship to other images. Eliot's real novelty was his deliberate
elimination of all merely connective and transitional passages, his building up of the total pattern of
meaning through the immediate comparison of images without overt explanation of what they are doing,
together with his use of indirect references to other works of literature (some at times quite obscure).

Eliot starts his poem "The Hollow Men" with a quote from Joseph Conrad's novel the Heart of
Darkness. The line "Mistah Kurtz-he dead" refers to a Mr. Kurtz who was a European trader who had gone
in the "the heart of darkness" by traveling into the central African jungle, with European standards of life
and conduct. Because he has no moral or spiritual strength to sustain him, he was soon turned into a
barbarian. He differs, however, from Eliot's "hollow men" as he is not paralyzed as they are , but on his
death catches a glimpse of the nature of his actions when he claims "The horror! the Horror!" Kurtz is thus
one of the "lost /Violent souls" mentioned in lines 15-16. Eliot next continues with "A penny for the Old
Guy". This is a reference to the cry of English children soliciting money for fireworks to commemorate Guy
Fawkes day, November 5; which commemorates the "gunpowder plot" of 1605 in which Guy Fawkes and
other conspirators planned to blow up both houses of Parliament. On this day, which commemorates the
failure of the explosion, the likes of Fawkes are burned in effigy and mock explosions using fireworks are
produced. The relation of this custom to the poem suggests another inference: as the children make a
game of make believe out of Guy Fawkes , so do we make a game out of religion.

The first lines bring the title and theme into a critical relationship. We are like the "Old Guy", effigies
stuffed with straw. It may also be noticed that the first and last part of the poem indicate a church service,
and the ritual service throughout. This is indicated in the passages "Leaning together...whisper together",
and the voices "quiet and meaningless" as the service drones on. The erstwhile worshippers disappear in
a blur of shape, shade gesture, to which normality is attached. Then the crucial orientation is developed,
towards "death's other Kingdom." We know that we are in the Kingdom of death, not as "violent souls" but
as empty effigies, "filled with straw", of this religious service.

Part two defines the hollow men in relation to the reality with those "direct eyes have met". "Direct
eyes" symbolizing those who represent something positive (direct). Fortunately, the eyes he dare not meet
even in dreams do not appear in "death's dream kingdom." They are only reflected through broken light
and shadows, all is perceived indirectly. He would not be any nearer , any more direct, in this twilight
kingdom. He fears the ultimate vision.

Part three defines the representation of death's kingdom in relationship to the worship of the hollow
men. A dead, arid land, like it's people, it raises stone images of the spiritual, which are implored by the
dead. And again the "fading star" establishes a sense of remoteness from reality. The image of frustrated
love which follows is a moment of anguished illumination suspended between the two kingdoms of death.
Lips that would adore, pray instead to a broken image. The "broken stone" unites the "stone images" and
the broken column," which bent the sunlight.

Part four explores this impulse in relation to the land, which now darkens progressively as the valley
of the shadow of death. Now there are not even hints of the eyes (of the positive), and the "fading"
becomes the "dying" star. In action the hollow men now "grope together / And avoid speech", gathered on
the banks of the swollen river which must be crossed to get to "death's other kingdom". The contrast with
part I is clear. Without any eyes at all they are without any vision, unless "the eyes" return as the
"perpetual", not a fading or dying star. But for empty men this is only a hope. As the star becomes a rose,
so the rose becomes the rose windows of the church; the rose as an image of the church and multifoliate.
Which is a reference to Dante's Divine Comedy, where the multifoliate rose is a symbol of paradise, in
which the saints are the petals of the rose.

But Part Five develops the reality, not the hope of the empty men; the cactus not the rose. The
nursery level make believe mocks the hope of empty men. In desire they "go round the prickly pear" but
are frustrated by the prickles. The poem now develops the frustration of impulse. At various levels, and in
various aspects of life, there falls the frustrating shadow of fear, the essential shadow of this land. Yet the
shadow is more than fear: it concentrates the valley of shadow into a shape of horror, almost a
personification of its negative character. The passage from the Lord's Prayer relates the Shadow to
religion, with irony in the attribution. Next the response about the length of life relates it to the burden of
life. Lastly the Lord's Prayer again relates the Shadow to the Kingdom that is so hard. This repetition
follows the conflict of the series that produces life itself, frustrating the essence from descent to being. This
is the essential irony of their impaired lives. The end comes by way of ironic completion as the nursery
rhyme again takes up its repetitive round, and terminates with the line that characterizes the evasive
excuse. They are the whimpers of fear with which the hollow men end, neither the bang of Guy Fawkes
day nor the "lost violent soul."

In part Five the frustration of reality is described by the abstractions introduced in Part I; life is
frustrated at every level, and this accounts for the nature of the land and the character of its people. By
placing G-d in a casual relation to this condition, the poem develops an irony which results in the
"whimper". But the most devastating irony is formal: the extension of game ritual in liturgical form.