Emptiness in The Hollow Men Essay -- Hollow Men Essays

Emptiness in The Hollow Men After Eliot had published The shove along Land, he felt as though he had not been able to fully convey the sense of desperation and emptiness in that work. Beginning with Doriss Dream Songs and Eyes I Last Saw in Tears, he explored these themes, eventually uniting all such poems in The Hollow Men. The end yield is a work that, unlike The Waste Land and its ultimate chance for redemption, has only the indelible emptiness of the hollow workforce as its conclusion. The hollow men are those who, in life, did not act on their beliefs they resisted any action at all, and as a result stagnate eternally in the Shadow, a land in between heaven and hell, completely isolated from both. Eliots allusions give a familiar literary and popular basis to the setting, while the symbols and melodic progression convey the futility and spiritual brokenness of the men. The poems initial epigraph, Mistah Kurtz-- He dead is the first of many allusions to Conrads novel, Heart of Darkness. Eliot uses the references to draw the readers attention to the moral situation of Kurtz and the others who have crossed/ With direct eyes, to deaths other Kingdom. These men and Kurtz defined themselves through their actions, whether or not they were good. In Baudelaires words, So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good so far as we do evil or good, we are human and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing at least, we exist (Drew 94). An entire description of the condition of the hollow men, this quote has also been used in criticism of Heart of Darkness. Thus the (spiritual) stagnation of the tumid river and those who wait beside it is contrasted with the dynamici... ...ubmission to a valet de chambre that ends not with a bang but a whimper. Works Cited Brady, Ann Patrick. Lyricism in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot. London Kennikat Press, 1978. Drew, Elizabeth. T.S. Eliot The Design of His Poetry. New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1949. Headings, Philip R.. T.S. Eliot, Revised Edition. capital of Massachusetts Twayne Publishers, 1982. Moody, A. David. The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot. Cambridge University of Cambridge Press, 1994. Moody, A. David. T.S. Eliot, Poet. Cambridge University of Cambridge Press, 1994. Raine, Craig. The Awful Daring of T.S. Eliot. The Guardian. 21. August 19, 1988. Roessel, David. Guy Fawkes Day and the Versailles Peace in The Hollow Men. English Language Notes, Sept. 1990. 52-58. Vol. 28. Williamson, George. A Readers Guide to T.S. Eliot. New York Octagon Books, 1974.