In the poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot immediately gives his work a tone of darkness and desperation. Eliot also uses references of works from Dantes, Julius Caesar, and Joseph Conrad. These three men majorly influenced Eliot on his writings spiritually and intellectually. Eliot was going through a rough patch in his life during with his wife during the time that he wrote “The Hollow Men.” He reveals his views on contemporary life and uses the poem as a cry for relief from his personal troubles (“Explanation of: ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot.”) Also, this poem emphasizes how life was after World War 1 (“Eliot, T.S., 452). In “The Hollow Men,” Eliot reveals images of brokenness, darkness, and emptiness through his worldview on a decadent modern society (Gopang 2).
At the beginning of T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” there is a reference to Mistah Kurtz and his death. What is the significance of this? Mistah Kurtz is a servant in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Why did Eliot choose Kurtz? He is referenced in this poem because he is suspected of being hollow and lacking of human characteristics. People believe Kurtz is chosen for this passage because the poem is set up after the time of his death. Therefore, the men in the poem are referred to as “hollow,” like Kurtz (Shmoop Editorial Team.) Eliot also refers to the men in the poem as hollow and stuffed. Considering those words are two completely opposite comparisons, how are these men both hollow and stuffed at the same time? These men are lacking of something essential in their lives. They are stuffed with emptiness, like straw, which causes them to lean on each other because they are unable to support themselves (Shmoop Editorial Team.) The men are whispering together. What a...
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...foliate rose? A Multifoliate rose is a rose with many pedals. Eliot uses this rose in reference to Dante Alighieri. The rose represents the community of Heaven. In regards to the hollow men, the point is that they cannot save themselves. All of their hope comes from the heavenly souls who must come down and save them.
Works Cited
“Eliot, T.S.,.” The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 16th ed. 2003. Print.
“Explanation of: ‘The Hollow Men’ by T. S. Eliot.” LitFinder Contemporary Collection.
Detroit: Gale, 2010. LitFinder. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.
Gopang, Abdul Sattar, Muhammad Khan Sangi, and Abdul Fattah Soomro. “T. S. Eliot’s
Indigenous Critical Concepts and ‘The Hollow Men.’” Language In India Apr. 2012: 473+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Jan. 2014.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Hollow Men." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11
Nov. 2008. Web. 21 Jan. 2014.
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 ...
Thomas Stearns Eliot was perhaps one of the most critical writers in the English language’s history. Youngest of seven children and born to the owner of a Brick Company, he wasn’t exactly bathed in poverty at all. Once he graduated from Harvard, he went on to found the Unitarian church of St. Luis. Soon after, Eliot became more serious about literature. As previously stated, his literature works were possibly some of the most famous in history. Dr. Tim McGee of Worland High School said that he would be the richest writer in history if he was still alive, and I have no choice but to believe him. In the past week many of his works have been observed in my English literature class. Of Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poems Preludes, The Journey of the Magi, The Hollow Men, The Waste Land, and Four Quartets, I personally find his poem The Hollow men to be the most relatable because of its musical allusions, use of inclusive language, and his opinion on society.
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot is a poem of struggle for meaning amongst the meaningless. T.S. Eliot shows the reader how in this day and age society is becoming less and less active and beginning to become more careless in the way in which we live and behave, as represented throughout the poem. It brings out all of our worlds weaknesses and flaws. Eliot brings out the fact that the human race is disintegrating. We are compared to as hollow men with no emotions, cares, and nothing inside. Hollow men all look different in some way, but inside we are all the same. We shift in whatever direction we are being blown in. In The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot examines the absence of spiritual guidance, lack of communication between individuals, and absence of direction of outstanding and pro founding leadership.
the Tribal Twenties.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 210, (1994): n. pag. Web. 20 May 2009.
So, 'The Hollow Man'; has many parallels that make it a perfect epigraph for The Great Gatsby. The three key aspects of the poem that relate it to The Great Gatsby were the hollow men, the stuffed men, and the paralyzed force. All three depict the society Gatsby lived in and the life he had to go through. The hollow and stuffed men showed the two types of people in Gatsby's society. The hollow men contain no inner spirit or love toward one another. However, the stuffed men consisted of bravery, self-control, and love. They were Tom, Daisy, Jay, and George, respectively. The poem categorizes where people fit in society. The final parallel is the paralyzed force including Owl Eyes and the billboard. Both had a frozen outlook on life and someone to look up to. In conclusion, Fitzgerald and Eliot created classics that will be analyzed for many years to come. However, no one will be able to make an epigraph for The Great Gatsby better than Eliot's 'The Hollow Man.';
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,
Many people in the world who are unhappy with their lives can connect with the emptiness the hollow men feel in Eliot’s poem. “We are the stuffed men leaning together headpiece filled with straw” indicates an unoriginal quality that all the men share. Their goals in life are alike because they are not fulfilling. In “The Hollow Men,” the image of scarecrows represent people’s empty lives and their vacant pursuits. The hollow men’s lives have no point or meaning.
The author’s scenes of interpretation follow his reasoning for creating such a historic novel that causes many disputes from people all over the world. In Joesph Conrad’s unforgettable novel, Heart of Darkness, Kurtz last words, or the reason Marlow lied to Kurtz’s mistress about his last words being her name, will never be completely answered. Upon Kurtz’s encounter with death, he uttered the words “The horror! The horror!” as a result of reflecting on his own character and of humanity in general. Due to his own cruelty and the horrendous world that humankind created, he was pleased to be leaving every aspect
Eliot's Themes of Death and Futility in the Poem Remind Your Self of The Hollow Men
Between the two authors, Hemingway and Eliot, a similar idea shows through their writing, connecting them. They both use the common aspect of negative tone to reflect how after being in a war, the purpose that used to drive one’s life grows pointless and irrelevant. In the text of “A Soldier’s Home,” Krebs tells his mother “I don’t love anybody,”(Hemingway) which shows the audience the bitterness which he has attained. One may assume this aggravation comes from war due to Kreb’s mother’s surprise at finding this new attribute. Like “Soldier's Home”, “The Hollow Men” by TS Eliot has an indignant tone that shows the negative responses one returning from war has of their surroundings. Eliot shows the melancholy of his text while saying “our dried
Eliot begins The Waste Land by bemoaning the fact that spring exudes false hope through its evidence of new growth and destroys the numbness and warmth acquired during winter’s hibernation from life or feeling. The return of feeling brings renewed acknowledgment of the emptiness and barrenness of modern life. “What Eliot wants to highlight is the pain of coming back to life” (Torrens 24). He expresses the cause of the pain in the description of the stony and barren landscape in which there is no shelter and nothing can grow. Man’s spirit can...
Throughout the poem, it appears that the men feel that they have done nothing wrong. The title itself, “The Hollow Men,” indicates that perhaps there is nothing to these men at all—as if they have done neither good nor evil. The conspiracy that they appear to be contriving is not made clear in the poem. One can only assume, however, that is it of some evil nature in the way that there is so much attention drawn to it. In Part I of the poem, the men seem to be vehemently pleading innocent to the audience. They argue that their collaborations are harmless in the lines, “Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless/As wind in dry grass.” It’s as if they are trying to persuade their audience that their efforts were truly without any cruel intention, like a “gesture without motion.” The men seem to know deep down that they have committed a wrong in the way that they are fervently denying their guilt, as anyone ashamed of something well generally deny it more than usual. Yet this excuse of passive planning could never possibly emancipate them from a fate in purgatory.
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
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.
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.