Seminar 2

Modernism and the Hollow Men

Modernism (1910-1930). The high point was in 1922, with James Joyce’s Ulysses
and T.S. Elliot’s the Wasteland. In this, there were no fixed assumptions. It was a
revolution in the literature of the time, speaking about how art relates to life, and
literature to the wider world. It existed in an understanding to Realism and the
19th century. Realism had a message and a moral, and it related with the social
issues of the time. Modernism, however, was at a remove from every day
concerns and was about an elitist world. It was very elusive and aware of its
position. Modernist texts don’t tell you what to think, there is no obvious
message. Modernists distrusted ‘direct telling’.

Formal Modernist Devices

-Stream-of-consciousness
-Fragmentation (writing in fragments, leaving it up to the reader to construct a
meaning).
-Elision/Ellipsis: leaving something very important out to create a dramatic effect
and exercise interpretative power.
-Juxtaposition: a combination of unexpected elements.
-Self-consciousness: a sense that it’s a literary work related to the world.
Literature is questioned.
-Literary allusion.

The Hollow Men (T.S. Elliot)

I They’re stuck on the river Styx, and can’t cross over to any side. They’re
paralysed and unremembered.
II Purgatory. Scarecrows are hollow, unable to move, stuck in a field, only
other things move them. Because of this, not able to get into paradise. Not their
decision, other people’s. They’re unremembered and thus unable to move.
III Dry, dead land as a reference to purgatory. Lifeless. Shades who can’t
cross the river either to Heaven or to Hell. The shadow preventing human
affairs. Men who didn’t quite get it right in life and ended up in purgatory.
IV Again, purgatory. They’re on a river circling Hell, but can still see Heaven.
The eyes of Beatrice are in Heaven. Hope, fellowship.
V An idea which you cannot translate into reality, as stuck hollow men who
can’t do anything else. Suddenly they are really dead. They fade out like a
candle, nobody notices. They’ve lost their identity in limbo. Whimper might be a
newborn child, but is most definitely a reference to Guy Fawkes. A children’s
rhyme is combined with the Lord’s prayer and the final stanza=baby?

Seminar 4:
Is Heart of Darkness racist?
It’s a predictable description of Africa, and slightly autobiographical.

Achebe only does a partial, subjective reading. The colonials are voiceless. Is this
racism or was Conrad just a man of his time?
Is it sexist?
None of the females have names.
Women: condescending. Aunt is just needed to get a job. Wrong idea about
women.
Mistress: Proud woman, sensual, noble, stately. But is it bad to have a female as a
head of the tribe? Does that make them retarded? The only black character who’s
not afraid of the horn.
Intended: Stereotype of what women at the time were supoosed to be. Stately
and nice. Perfect. Very faithful. The emphasis is on how pale and good she is.

Marlowe’s task as a man: protect the women (not saying last words). Patronising.
Then again, wife didn’t know Kurtz in Congo. Would have been a struggle to
explain.

‘the horror, the horror’: no one really knows. Reflection of own horrible things?
Africa? False idea of civilisation in Europe? Horrors of every human being?