We are the Hollow Men We are the Stuffed Men

647 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: T. S. Eliot words to "The Hollow Men

From the text Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot, is an allusion poem. Many references from texts like Heart of Darkness (by Joseph Conrad), Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and finally Dante’s divine Comedy. In fact, majority of the poem The Hollow Men is borrowed from other stories or poems. As T.S. Eliot said himself, that good poets write, but great poets borrow. However, this very complex poem has many understandings to it. But when it is broken down, this poem becomes more realistic, than we are able to understand what we could not understand. As the texts states in the background text, “’The Hollow Men’ help him contrast the past with the present.” (Prentice Hall Literature [page 1163]). Thus, the three main messages that are best shown in the poem The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot is, we are hollow men, but stuffed men, a world of broken symbols and images, and finally the vacant, desolate surroundings.
Often mentioned throughout the text, “We are the hollow men we are the stuffed men,” stated by T.S. Eliot in his text The Hollow Men (Prentice Hall Literature [page 1163 lines 1-2]). This is often used as an expression related to human beings. Most things that we say and do is meaningless. Our kind could very well be related to scare-crows. Indeed this accusation is made through T.S. Eliot’s words in The Hollow Men. Also stated in the text by Eliot, “We are the Hollow men we are the stuffed men learning together headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” (Prentice Hall Literature [page 1163 lines 1-4]). Every human is filled with organs; however, do our “insides” make a difference in this world. Even though most things become meaningless in life, there is a greater value or perspective among that. If life is viewed as meaningless then how are we li...

... middle of paper ...

... a job well done. Although his poem were somewhat easy to get, and very difficult at the same time The Hollow Men has a great understanding and has left a great impression in my mind, but The Hollow Men was one of the stories that had tremendous meaning. Even though, this allusion poem (borrowed passages used in his poem The Hollow Men) has many external resources from other texts, if you can make it something as special and meaningful as this, anything is possible. There are many messages in the text “The Hollow Men”; however, the three that stood out to me were, we are hollow men, but stuffed men, a world of broken symbols and images, and finally the vacant, desolate surroundings. All of this tying into one key idea, how we view the present day, our eyes give us the gift of sight, but sometimes that is misjudged.

Works Cited

Prentice Hall Literature Volume Two

Show More
Related

  • An Analysis of Komanuyakaa Facing It

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...

    Read More

  • Isolation In The Hollow Men

    1483 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the poem, “The Hollow Men,” isolation is a theme that occurs often. The author, T.S. Eliot, uses the description of hollow men to emphasize his definition of isolation. The hollow men have headpieces that are filled with straw. The straw represents that the heads are empty. The hollow men may have once been associated with royalty but now are filled with straw.

    Read More

  • Tone and Diction in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and T.S. Eliot’s Poem, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    Each literary work portrays something different, leaving a unique impression on all who read that piece of writing. Some poems or stories make one feel happy, while others are more solemn. This has very much to do with what the author is talking about in his or her writing, leaving a bit of their heart and soul in the work. F. Scott Fitzgerald, when writing The Great Gatsby, wrote about the real world, yet he didn’t paint a rosy picture for the reader. The same can be said about T.S. Eliot, whose poem “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” presents his interpretation of hell. Both pieces of writing have many similarities, but the most similar of them all is the tone of each one.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of “Between the World and Me” By Richard Wright

    825 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wright utilizes personification to provide the narrator with an amplified empathy through the personal reflection required in order to experience the sympathetic suffering accounted for by the physical remnants of a lynching. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker describes the scene as “guarded by scaly oaks and elms” (ln. 2) thereby stating nature guards and preserves memories of the atrocities of society, despite certain distortions associated with time. By presenting the woods with this lively quality, Wright emphasizes the eerie qualities of the world in preserving the scars of inhumane acts dealt through society’s hand. Once recognizing nature’s preservation of the memories, Wright implies that the speaker remains capable to unearth the scene in which they are to experience sympathy and empathy. The speaker then discovers “white bones slumbering” (ln.4) which presents the bones with the human ability of sleeping. This in return suggests an ironic twist crucial to the development of the poem. By suggesting the bones are in mere rest, this also renders bones capable of awaking from their rest. As the speaker continues, the bones as well as the other elements described suddenly “awake” and reform thereby creating a shift in the visual experience of the...

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Empathy In The Harlem Renaissance

    925 Words  | 2 Pages

    An elegance in word choice that evokes a vivid image. It would take a quite a bit of this essay to completely analyze this essay, so to break it down very briefly. It portrays a positive image of blackness as opposed to darkness and the color black normally being connected with evil, sorrow, and negativity. The poem as a whole connects blackness with positivity through its use of intricate, beautiful words and images.

    Read More

  • The Hollow Men

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is a dramatic monologue, free verse poem that consists of five parts that could be considered five separate poems. His use of “allegorically abstract text nevertheless achieves a remarkable unity of effect in terms of voice, mood and imagery” (Morace 948). Before the poem starts, there are two epigraphs; “Mistah Kurtz – he dead. / A penny for the Old Guy” (lines 1-2). Eliot alludes to these two epigraphs because their themes are developed throughout his poem. “The first epigraph is from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” a story …that examines the hollowness and horror of lack of faith, spiritual paralysis, and despair” (Bloom 61), just like the “hollow men” in his poem. The second epigraph “refers to the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day in Britain” (Bloom 61). This is a day that celebrates Fawkes’ unsuccessful rebellion against King James I with his capture in the cellar of the Parliament building, where stored gun powder was supposed to blow up and kill King James I and his family. Once captured, he cowardly turned over his co-conspirators and they all were killed. It is “celebrated with bonfires, fireworks, the burning of scarecrows,

    Read More

  • Kenneth Fearing’s Dirge

    1633 Words  | 4 Pages

    ..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.

    Read More

  • The Statue Of Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    This poem describes a story told you by a passing traveler of a ruined statue of a king, Ozymandias, seemingly in a desolate desert. On the statue in is inscribed, “‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’/Nothing beside remain” (“Ozymandias” 10-12). Upon examination of the surrounding land, we realize that the once vast kingdom around the statue has been taken back by the desert, leaving the ironic message on the statue. This poem shows Shelley’s ideas of how all is temporary, especially mankind and our achievements. Showing romantic values, Shelley believed nature is much greater than man and no matter how big your kingdom, mather nature will always take back what was always

    Read More

  • Eliot's Themes of Death and Futility in the Poem Remind Your Self of The Hollow Men

    407 Words  | 1 Pages

    Eliot's Themes of Death and Futility in the Poem Remind Your Self of The Hollow Men

    Read More

  • Edgar Allan Poe Grief And Grief

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the Poem, “The Raven”, Poe chooses the theme of morbidity and grief to depict a story that reflects depression. In order to exemplify the story through depression and morbidity, Poe uses symbolism to really have the reader understand his twisted mentality. For example, Poe uses the word Pluto in numerous of his poems and tales; the word Pluto, is derived from a Roman Greek god Hades. This symbolic meaning should right away warn the reader that grief and agony is yet to arrive. Moreover, by mentioning “night” and “midnight” throughout the poem shows the Poe is using that word as a symbol for death. When beginning the poem, Edgar created a background in which a man is sitting and pondering in his library. After hearing a sudden knock on the door, the man approaches the door and realizes there is no there to greet him. However, a shiny black raven shows up at the men’s window and inflicts feelings of negativity, agony, and grief that later on in the poem overcame the narra...

    Read More

  • Theme of "The Hollow Men"

    626 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is said to be a thin line between the planning and the execution a sinister action, as the idea is what first drives the motion. This is the central theme of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men,” in which the men depicted find themselves on the brink of hell, suffering not from their actions, but from their conspiracy to act.

    Read More

  • elationship between art and society

    523 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is this moment of recollection that he wonders about the contrast between the world of shadows and the world of the Ideal. It is in this moment of wonder that man struggles to reach the world of Forms through the use of reason. Anything that does not serve reason is the enemy of man. Given this, it is only logical that poetry should be eradicated from society. Poetry shifts man’s focus away from reason by presenting man with imitations of objects from the concrete world.

    Read More

  • T.S. Eliot’s Powerful Use of Fragmentation in The Waste Land

    2713 Words  | 6 Pages

    T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of The Oval Portrait By Edgar Allen Poe

    2086 Words  | 5 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe was most notably recognized as an intellectual writer. Poe’s most famous works include “The Raven” as well as “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe had quite a few other pieces of literature that may not have been as prominent as the formerly mentioned works, but their Gothic moods and dark tones were certainly on par as a collective whole. This critical analysis will focus on just one of Poe’s literary works, “The Oval Portrait” and how the messages and themes presented within this work carry over into the modern society of today.

    Read More

  • Nature in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.

    Read More

More about We are the Hollow Men We are the Stuffed Men

Open Document