The Hollow Men
by
T. S. Eliot
Part I:
Bruce (591201311)
Part II,III,IV: Sara (591202250)
Emily Tian (591202092)
Part V:
Rachel (591201610)
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Dante, Paradiso
Dante, Purgatorio
<http://pages.slc.edu/.../ blocks/poetry-asthetics.htm>
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The Hollow man
Source:
http://www.dpnet.com.cn/school/school_darkroom5.asp?maxid=456
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Nihilism
Total rejection of all religious and moral
belief.
Belief that nothing really exists.
The Hollow Man is one of nihilism work.
Eliot made his style in writing The Hollow
Man.
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Four major sources of reference
The historical account of “The
Gunpowder Plot”
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Dante’s Divine Comedy
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
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I
Mistah Kurtz-he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy.
Epigraphs: Mistah Kurtz he dead: In Conrad's Heart of
Darkness, this is the phrase used by the black cabin boy
announcing Mr. Kurtz's death.
Mr. Kurtz, a European trader, had gone into jungle ( The
Heart of Darkness) with high intentions, but was soon
barbarized by his own greed.
"The wilderness ... found him out early....I think it whisper
to him things about himself which he did not know—and
the whisper ... proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed
loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."
Describe his hollowness.
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I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
THE HOLLOW MEN: On the situation and the
atmosphere, cf. Dante's account (lnferno III) of Hell's
entrance where dwell in "the starless air," in "air forever
dark," and "without hope of death," those "who never
were alive“—"the wretched souls of those who lived
without infamy and without praise" because they were
not positive enough spiritually to be either good or evil.
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Our dried voices, when
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We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
10
Shape without form shade without colour,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
8
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes to death's other Kingdom
Remember us--if at all-- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
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13-14. Those... Kingdom: i.e., those who stood for
something positive, either evil or good, and so can really
die, as the hollow men cannot.
Hollow men  stuffed men
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20
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
Eyes: In the Purgatorio, Beatrice’s eyes are a symbol
of spiritual reality.
20: the image of heaven
23: a traditional graveyard memorial for a premature
death.
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There, is a tree swinging
25 And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Star: a symbol of both naturalistic flux and
eternal spirit in the world.
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30
35
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
Scarecrow: a symbol of spiritual looseness of the speaker.
32-34: The speaker conceals his lack of possibility.
37-38: The speaker may meet the eyes in the real world
of the dead.
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40
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Deathlike/ lifeless images: cactus/dead land, a
fading star~ The hollow men are like themselves.
43: The speaker views himself as dead or dying
and prays for getting out of emptiness and lifeless.
13
45 Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
50 Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
46: The speaker’s empty life is another form of death.
51: whispering meaningless is just like a broken
prayer.
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IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
55 In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
60 Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
The eyes that may reappear beyond the river portend salvation.
54-56: the image of emptiness and death
The water: A symbol of cleansing grace.
58-60: The image of the lost souls belongs to a boundary motif.
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Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
65 Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
63: A symbol of the Holy Virgin
64: Dante’s Celestial Rose made of light
65-67: The hollow men remain sightless unless the rose
reappears, love along with powers of creation and
repentance is still sought in the world of nightmare.
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Part II, III,IV
The eyes, the rose and the star are
equivalent the “Grail” of The Waste Land.
The repetition of the same words, like
“eyes,” ”broken,” ”death kingdom,” “a
fading star,” makes powerful images.
The hollow men appear as the “distraction,
delusion, pretence” of the unenlightened
people and each one of them is a “fugitive
from reality.”
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V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
70 Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
75 And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Sex
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V
Between the conception
And the creation
80 Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Sex and the creation
19
V
Between the desire
85 And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
90 Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Sex, creation and salvation
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V
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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Works Cited
Eliot, T. S. “The Hollow Men.” The Norton Anthology
of English Literature. Ed. M. A. Abrams. 7th ed. Vol. 2.
New York: Norton, 2000. 2383-86.
---, T. S. “The Hollow Men.” 24 Nov. 2005
<http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/hmcl1007/1007a
nth/eliot.html>.
A Hypertext Version of T.S. Eliot's “The Hollow Men.”
26 Nov. 2005
<http://www.aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Poem.htm>.
Jimaine. Hollow Men. 2004. 26 Nov. 2005
< http://tostwins.slashcity.net/Hollow.htm>.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men” 1925. T.S. Eliot: The Complete
Poems and Plays,1905-1950. New York: Harcourt, 1958. 24
Nov. 2005
<http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&an=
7104250&lang=zh>.
Picture Dante, Paradiso and Dante, Purgatorio. 27 Nov. 2005
<pages.slc.edu/.../ blocks/poetry-asthetics.htm>.
Giuseppe C. Di Scipio. Ravenna. The Symbolic Rose in
Dante’s Paradiso 26 Nov. 2005
Smith, Grover, J. Hillis Miller, David Spurr and Robert
Crawford. On “The Hollow Men.” 24 Nov. 2005
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/hollow.htm>.
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