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Essay

Introduction

The Hollow Men is one of the best works by the great T. S. Eliot. This particular poem

is categorized under the huge Downers. It is categorized among the best in the career of Eliot

who has also managed to come up with some other different works which entails the Waste Land

of huge Downer and also the Four Quartets of the Glorious Upper. Eliot puts pen to paper during

one of his toughest moments in life. During this period, their marriage with Vivienne had been

broken because of speculations that his wife was having some external affairs with one of the

British philosophers (Eliot, 34) Most of the poems that Eliot wrote before were mainly

concerned with the failures of love and religious hope that was seen to be the most terrible thing.

The main focus for this paper will be concerning whether this poem has satisfied most of

the criteria that are required for any other poem. I believe that this is the real thing that has been

presented by this poem as a matter of fact. I will try to show some of the proofs on this in the

remaining part of this essay.

This poem commences with the famous quote from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

which was a tale about an Englishman who goes to Africa with his greed for power. This poem is

therefore concerned with a group of individuals who are describes to be more like the scarecrow.

These are the people who can be said to have some bonds to death and life. Most of them have
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also suffered from much immorality that has paralyzed their pursuit for good life. Throughout the

poem, these people are trapped on the shores of River Styx which was initially used by the

Greece as a symbol of division between the matters of life and death.

Most people believe that all the works of Eliot that came during the 1920s were mainly

seen as a reaction to the World War 1. During this time, Sir Eliot was mainly concerned with the

ideologies that surrounded the literacy and the traditional ethics of most Europeans. This poem

was therefore published in 1925 just 23 years before Eliot became the Nobel Literacy Prize

winner (Jeon, 57).

Settings of the poem

The poem was actually done in the desert that seemed to be having enough space for the

play to be conducted, although the surrounding did not favour them that much due to the place

being dry. Although the advantage they had was that, everything they wanted for example water,

which was from River Styx was there but the river was bit large that defeated most men to pass

across. This made them to be stag between life and death following the river being full or not, the

scenery was scattered with small cacti, dry grasses lose stones plus posts. The gravels was used

to show that once upon a time place was holy that it was only mend for gods ceremonies, a low

and useless tongue-tied scratchy sound was hard from a river bank, the voice that of Hollow

Men who were clustered together making their voices not to be known by people.

Their heads leaned together similar to a scarecrows a wooded post that made them not to

see anything. You hear a low and meaningless mumbling from the banks of the river. What's

that? Oh, it's just the Hollow Men, huddled together and trying not to be noticed. Their heads are

stuffed with straw and they lean together like scarecrows on wooden posts. They can't see
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anything, and thus feel their way around by "groping." They are waiting for a ferryman who will

never come.

Figurative speech

At the beginning of the poem, it is established that the Hollow Men survive in a land

which is barren and very much dry. This is even proved by the presence of the cacti plant that

survives in the desert. This dryness is used as a symbol in this poem. The dryness symbolized the

lack of life for The Hollow Men. The men here have dry veins that cannot even pump blood.

They are said to be just straws who when touched would feel like some ancient papers.

The other symbolism seen in this poem is to do with the shadow. It is asserted that the

shadow is a symbol of the darkest times that would disconnect effects from causes. The shadow

would also mess up with the natural features of the things. The shadow falls and separates

between the emotion and response which are usually connected. This fall can be said to mean the

spiritual paralysis that is facing these men. This refrain falls at the end of each and every stanza,

Falls the Shadow.

How the title is related to the content

The writer of this poem had a very fantastic time when it came to memorizing the things

that had happened to him. He has the guts of trying to find a place where he would come up with

titles. The only way this would happen was by ensuring that he would remember things that he

had studied. In most cases, these issues contained some similar expressions. In writing this

fantastic works, he considered The Broken Men and The Hollow Land. It is also evident that
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the Hollow Men were the ones who narrated this poem from the first line even without

considering this title.

Themes

There are several themes that Eliot has been able to cover in this wonderful work. Some

of these include dissatisfaction, passivity and exile. Dissatisfaction is evident where almost all

the Hollow Men are said to be dissatisfied and they should not be blamed for that. These people

have been caught up in the desert near the shore of a river that they are not able to cross over to.

However, due to dissatisfaction, they did not even have that urge to complain on this matter.

They even lack the power to speak up what is in their minds at this juncture. It is said that when

you dont have proper soul then its harder to work up the soul-crushing misery (Subhan, 88)

The other theme that is evident here is the theme of passivity. The Hollow Men is faced

with one bad situation in the essence of the Shadow. It is asserted that they cant even open

their books and thus they lay all the blame on the shadow. The worse of this comes in when these

Hollow Men are not able to respond to their emotions. This shadow here simply represents their

cowardice nature. It even makes them to fail most of their wills since they cannot stand out

strongly.

Conclusion

In recap, The Hollow Men is a series of poems that has so many issues at hand. This is

when you consider how the stories in it are set, some of the major topical issues addressed and

the use of splendid use of figures of speech. Sir Eliot does all he can to ensure that there is a

smoother transition of the story. These are people who have been together but make their lives to

be more of scarecrows. They cannot also achieve much as a result of being cowards. They live in
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a surrounding that is seen to be desolate. The character in the poem also lives in a planet which is

full of images and symbols that have been mostly broken. It therefore takes keen knowledge and

power to fully understand this fantastic poem. It is therefore evident that this work has provided

for all the indicators of a good poem as seen above.

Works cited

Eliot, Thomas Stearns, and Richard Grefe. The Hollow Men: 2015. Dartmouth College, 1969.
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Jeon, Joseph Jonghyun. "Eliot shadows: autography and style in the hollow men." Yeats Eliot

Review 24.4 (2007): 12-25.

Subhan, asep. Challenging the faith: ts eliots the hollow men and the abolition of religion.

Diss. State islamic university, 2014.