The Hollow MenT S EliotMistah Kurtz-he dead\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A penny for the Old Guy\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I\u00a0 \u00a0 We are the hollow men\u00a0 \u00a0 We are the stuffed men\u00a0 \u00a0 Leaning together\u00a0 \u00a0 Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!\u00a0 \u00a0 Our dried voices, when\u00a0 \u00a0 We whisper together\u00a0 \u00a0 Are quiet and meaningless\u00a0 \u00a0 As wind in dry grass\u00a0 \u00a0 Or rats’ feet over broken glass\u00a0 \u00a0 In our dry cellar\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Shape without form, shade without colour,\u00a0 \u00a0 Paralysed force, gesture without motion;\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Those who have crossed\u00a0 \u00a0 With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0 Remember us-if at all-not as lost\u00a0 \u00a0 Violent souls, but only\u00a0 \u00a0 As the hollow men\u00a0 \u00a0 The stuffed men.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0II\u00a0 \u00a0 Eyes I dare not meet in dreams\u00a0 \u00a0 In death’s dream kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0 These do not appear:\u00a0 \u00a0 There, the eyes are\u00a0 \u00a0 Sunlight on a broken column\u00a0 \u00a0 There, is a tree swinging\u00a0 \u00a0 And voices are\u00a0 \u00a0 In the wind’s singing\u00a0 \u00a0 More distant and more solemn\u00a0 \u00a0 Than a fading star.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Let me be no nearer\u00a0 \u00a0 In death’s dream kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0 Let me also wear\u00a0 \u00a0 Such deliberate disguises\u00a0 \u00a0 Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves\u00a0 \u00a0 In a field\u00a0 \u00a0 Behaving as the wind behaves\u00a0 \u00a0 No nearer-\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Not that final meeting\u00a0 \u00a0 In the twilight kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0III\u00a0 \u00a0 This is the dead land\u00a0 \u00a0 This is cactus land\u00a0 \u00a0 Here the stone images\u00a0 \u00a0 Are raised, here they receive\u00a0 \u00a0 The supplication of a dead man’s hand\u00a0 \u00a0 Under the twinkle of a fading star.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Is it like this\u00a0 \u00a0 In death’s other kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0 Waking alone\u00a0 \u00a0 At the hour when we are\u00a0 \u00a0 Trembling with tenderness\u00a0 \u00a0 Lips that would kiss\u00a0 \u00a0 Form prayers to broken stone.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0IV\u00a0 \u00a0 The eyes are not here\u00a0 \u00a0 There are no eyes here\u00a0 \u00a0 In this valley of dying stars\u00a0 \u00a0 In this hollow valley\u00a0 \u00a0 This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 In this last of meeting places\u00a0 \u00a0 We grope together\u00a0 \u00a0 And avoid speech\u00a0 \u00a0 Gathered on this beach of the tumid river\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Sightless, unless\u00a0 \u00a0 The eyes reappear\u00a0 \u00a0 As the perpetual star\u00a0 \u00a0 Multifoliate rose\u00a0 \u00a0 Of death’s twilight kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0 The hope only\u00a0 \u00a0 Of empty men.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0V\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Here we go round the prickly pear\u00a0 \u00a0 Prickly pear prickly pear\u00a0 \u00a0 Here we go round the prickly pear\u00a0 \u00a0 At five o’clock in the morning.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the idea\u00a0 \u00a0 And the reality\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the motion\u00a0 \u00a0 And the act\u00a0 \u00a0 Falls the Shadow\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0For Thine is the Kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the conception\u00a0 \u00a0 And the creation\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the emotion\u00a0 \u00a0 And the response\u00a0 \u00a0 Falls the Shadow\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Life is very long\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the desire\u00a0 \u00a0 And the spasm\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the potency\u00a0 \u00a0 And the existence\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the essence\u00a0 \u00a0 And the descent\u00a0 \u00a0 Falls the Shadow\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0For Thine is the Kingdom\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 For Thine is\u00a0 \u00a0 Life is\u00a0 \u00a0 For Thine is the\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0This is the way the world ends\u00a0 \u00a0 This is the way the world ends\u00a0 \u00a0 This is the way the world ends\u00a0 \u00a0 Not with a bang but a whimper.<\/p>\n
1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.”2. A…Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the “gunpowder plot” failed.3. Those…Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante’s “Paradiso”.\u00a04. Eyes: eyes of those in eternity who had faith and confidence and were a force that acted and were not paralyzed.5. crossed stave: refers to scarecrows6. tumid river: swollen river. The River Acheron in Hell in Dante’s “Inferno”. The damned must cross this river to get to the land of the dead.7. Multifoliate rose: in dante’s “Divine Comedy” paradise is described as a rose of many leaves.8. prickly pear: cactus9. Between…act: a reference to “Julius Caesar” “Between the acting of a dreadful thing\/And the first motion, all the interim is\/Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.”10. For…Kingdom: the beginning of the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot\u2019s \u2018The Hollow\u00a0Men\u2019<\/p>\n
A summary of Eliot\u2019s classic poem<\/p>\n
\u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 is a poem of boundaries. Published in 1925, halfway through the modernist decade of the 1920s, it was T. S. Eliot\u2019s one major poem\u00a0between\u00a0The Waste Land\u00a0in 1922\u00a0and\u00a0his conversion to Christianity in 1927. The \u2018Hollow Men\u2019 of the poem are themselves trapped in some sort of between-world, a limbo or purgatory between death and life, existence and nothingness, light and darkness. How should we analyse this most liminal of modernist poems?<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s tempting to analyse \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 as a sort of reprise of\u00a0The Waste Land. Like\u00a0The Waste Land, \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 began life as a series of shorter poems: early versions of part of \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 are included in the\u00a0Collected Poems 1909-1962\u00a0(see \u2018Eyes that last I saw in tears\u2019 and \u2018The wind sprang up at four o\u2019clock\u2019). These and several other short verses were published as \u2018Doris\u2019s Dream Songs\u2019 in\u00a0The Chapbook\u00a0in 1924.\u00a0They share a number of features: the five-part structure, the use of sombre allusions (the Book of Common Prayer in\u00a0The Waste Land; the Lord\u2019s Prayer in \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019) alongside snippets of\u00a0classic nursery rhymes\u00a0(\u2018London Bridge is falling down\u2019 in\u00a0The Waste Land; \u2018Here we go round the mulberry bush\u2019 in \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019), the references to a sort of wasteland world populated by rats and lost souls. Yet it would be a mistake, perhaps, to interpret \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 as a mere add-on to that earlier, more famous poem. Although it is not about development or progress itself \u2013 instead, it\u2019s about stasis, immobility and a sense of being trapped \u2013 \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 does move T. S. Eliot\u2019s poetry on in a number of key ways.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 is a poem about repetition: in the\u00a0Collected Poems 1909-62, that title, \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019, is given twice, once on the poem\u2019s title-page and again before the first line. The poem has two epigraphs; \u2018Here we go round the prickly pear\u2019 is repeated, as is \u2018prickly pear\u2019 in the line that falls between the two \u2018Here we go\u2019 lines; \u2018This is the way the world ends\u2019 is repeated not once but twice at the end of the poem. Allusion to Joseph Conrad is repeated, too, for \u2018Life is very long\u2019, like \u2018Mistah Kurtz \u2013 he dead\u2019 from\u00a0Heart of Darkness\u00a0(1899), quotes from Conrad\u2019s fiction, this time from\u00a0An Outcast of the Islands\u00a0(1896).<\/p>\n
Indeed, a clue to the prominent themes of the poem is provided by the poem\u2019s two epigraphs. The first is the four-word declaration of the villain Mr Kurtz\u2019s death given by an African boy to Marlow, the second narrator of Conrad\u2019s\u00a0Heart of Darkness. This allusion teases us with possible readings of the poem that follows: is \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019, like\u00a0Heart of Darkness, about the dark side of imperialism? Is it significant, given the title of Eliot\u2019s poem (arrived at, according to Eliot himself, by combining William Morris\u2019s \u2018The Hollow Land\u2019 with Rudyard Kipling\u2019s \u2018The Broken Men\u2019), that in Conrad\u2019s novel, the vile figure of colonialism, Kurtz, is described as being \u2018hollow at the core\u2019?<\/p>\n
Perhaps. But then we come to the second epigraph, this time a reference to the familiar child\u2019s cry on Guy Fawkes night: \u2018A penny for the Old Guy\u2019. Effigies of Guy Fawkes, the conspirator (though\u00a0not\u00a0the ringleader) arrested late on 4 November 1605 (not\u00a05 November) for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament, are burnt every year in Britain. But with this epigraph, it begins to look less likely that empire is the theme of Eliot\u2019s poem. But the reference to straw effigies does pave the way for the poem\u2019s \u2018stuffed men\u2019 with the headpieces \u2018filled with straw\u2019.<\/p>\n
The first four sections of \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 describe the situation of the titular men, dwelling in the \u2018dead land\u2019 (recalling the waste land of Eliot\u2019s earlier poem) and desert space, \u2018cactus land\u2019 (again, shades of\u00a0The Waste Land\u00a0here), in a sort of twilight world between \u2018death and dying\u2019. There is a \u2018tumid river\u2019 which might be interpreted as an allusion to the River Styx, the river across which the dead were ferried to Hades.<\/p>\n
The fifth and final section of \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 is a little different: it begins with a song suggesting a dance around the aforementioned cactus (\u2018round the prickly pear\u2019) at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. We then get a series of \u2018between\u2019 statements, which could not be more appropriate for this poem about interim states. What is being described here? One possible interpretation is that Eliot is talking about that other interim state between death and life \u2013 not at the end of our lives, but at the beginning. Between the\u00a0conception\u00a0and the\u00a0creation\u00a0\u2013 what is a baby after it has been conceived but before it has been born? This question is obviously a fraught one in the context of stem-cell research and debates over abortion. And what about the conception of a new life itself? Between the\u00a0desire\u00a0(erotic desire?) and the\u00a0spasm\u00a0(orgasm?)? And do we need to dwell on the seminal possibilities of a word like \u2018essence\u2019 in this connection? This is not to say that such an analysis of Eliot\u2019s lines decides the matter once and for all, of course. But the fact that this series of \u2018between\u2019 statements, almost like a chant, is punctuated by a reference to life itself (\u2018Life is very long\u2019) and to the words of the Lord\u2019s Prayer (\u2018For Thine is the Kingdom\u2019) suggest the almost divine miracle of human life. But this has to be balanced against the wretched existence of the hollow men, who are \u2013 like one of the speakers from\u00a0The Waste Land\u00a0\u2013 \u2018neither living nor dead\u2019. One is even tempted to propose that these hollow men\u00a0are\u00a0the souls of babies who never made it, whether because they were aborted or as a result of miscarriage \u2013 but then they wouldn\u2019t just be \u2018men\u2019, surely, nor would they be adults at all, perhaps.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 remains an elusive poem, like much of T. S. Eliot\u2019s work. It perhaps presents even more of a challenge to comprehension and close analysis than\u00a0The Waste Land\u00a0does. But it moves Eliot\u2019s work forward into more spiritual territory, albeit tentatively. Two years after \u2018The Hollow Men\u2019 was published, Eliot would join the Church of England. The same year, he would renounce his American passport in exchange for British citizenship. The between-man, the Anglo-American poet of the age, would be \u2018between\u2019 no more.<\/p>\n
Assignment: Write 3-5 pages on T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cThe Hollow Men.\u201d What does the poet mean by hollow men? Think in terms of the in-between worlds and situations Eliot mentions. For instance, what does Eliot mean by the following?<\/p>\n
Between the conception\u00a0 \u00a0 And the creation\u00a0 \u00a0 Between the emotion1\u00a0 \u00a0 And the response\u00a0 \u00a0 Falls the Shadow<\/p>\n
What does the poet mean between the conception and creation? Think in terms of conception, an idea, and the creation of the idea in physical form. The idea is not concrete but mental. There is often a lag time between the idea and the act, the thought and getting off the couch to accomplish the goal. People say that they are going to work out, but often they never get to it. That is the gap. Maybe you can recall and use people you know who have been stagnated in this between, hollow world. Think in terms of actual cases you are aware of to illustrate Eliot\u2019s contentions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Hollow MenT S EliotMistah Kurtz-he dead\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A penny for the Old Guy\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n