The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
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.
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
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
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
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.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
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.
"The Hollow Men" (1925) is a poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's
poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognized to be concerned most with postWorld War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles.
Background information
“The Hollow Men” is a poem written in 1925 by T.S. Eliot. The first section of the poem opens
to a group of Hollow Men. Everything about them is dry, from their bodies to their voices.
Everything they do is meaningless. In the second section, one of them is afraid to look at the
people who made it into death’s dream kingdom, something the Hollow Men cannot do. The
third section finds them in a barren land where they are unable to do the things they desire. In
the fourth section, the Hollow Man from section two talks about the desolate setting they are
in, afraid to look at people or have people look at them. Finally, in the fifth section, children
sing a nursery rhyme while they skip around a cactus. A shadow has gained control of them,
rendering them unable to think, create, act, or respond. The poem ends describing the end of
the world as a whimper.
Themes of The Hollow Men
One of the major themes prevalent in “The Hollow Men” is the struggle to maintain hope. The
Hollow Men hope that they will be rescued from their stagnant state, but this seems unlikely,
as they cannot even bring themselves to look at any of the souls who pass through. The stars
represent their hope, both of which grow dimmer as the poem continues.
Another theme that is interwoven into the poem is the concept of identity. When the Hollow
Men speak, they speak in unison because they do not have identities separate from each
other. Rather than real people, they are empty voids. While they do emotions, like fear and
sadness, Eliot wrote them to be incapable of regular human reactions. They truly have no
identity.
A third theme of “The Hollow Men” is the theme of exile. The Hollow Men are stuck on the
banks of the River Acheron, and though they are dead, they cannot cross into the realm of
death. In Dante’s Inferno, it is explained that some souls can be accepted into neither Hell nor
Heaven. They are not evil, but they are not inherently good, either. Instead of taking a stance
for one side or the other, they were only concerned with their own affairs and did not care
enough about the world around them to choose good or evil in the first place. While Dante felt
that the majority of humanity fell into this category, it seems as though the Hollow Men did,
too.
Eliot's inspiration for the work
Eliot said that he came up with the title of the poem from William Morris’s “The Hollow Land”
and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Broken Men”, though many believe that this is yet another of
Eliot’s carefully constructed allusions, as it is suspected that the title was inspired by
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the character of Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness. Divided into five separate parts, the poem consists of ninety eight lines, with the last
four being one of the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet: “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.”
The poem can be seen as told from three different perspectives. Each one represents one of
the phases a soul goes through whilst passing from of death’s kingdoms to another; the
‘dream kingdom’, the ‘twilight kingdom’, and the ‘other kingdom’. In the poem, Eliot says that
the living will be judged by the dead, the ‘hollow men’, who will see us as we truly are, deep in
our souls.
Summary
The poem begins with two epigraphs: one is a quotation from Joseph Conrad's Heart of
Darkness remarking on the death of the doomed character Kurtz. The other is an expression
used by English schoolchildren who want money to buy fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes
Day. On this holiday, people burn straw effigies of Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British
Parliament back in the 17th century.
The poem is narrated by one of the "Hollow Men."
In the first section of the poem, a bunch of Hollow Men are leaning together like scarecrows.
Everything about them is as dry as the Sahara Desert, including their voices and their bodies.
Everything they say and do is meaningless. They exist in a state like Hell, except they were too
timid and cowardly to commit the violent acts that would have gained them access to Hell.
They have not crossed over the River Styx to make it to either Heaven or Hell. The people who
have crossed over remember these guys as "hollow men."
In the second section, one hollow man is afraid to look at people who made it to "death's
dream kingdom" – either Heaven or Hell. The Hollow Men live in a world of broken symbols
and images.
The third section of the poem describes the setting as barren and filled with cacti and stones.
When the Hollow Men feel a desire to kiss someone, they are unable to. Instead, they say
prayers to broken stones.
In the fourth section, the hollow man from Section 2 continues to describe his vacant, desolate
surroundings, in which are no "eyes." The Hollow Men are afraid to look at people or to be
looked at.
The fifth and final section begins with a nursery rhyme modeled on the song "Here we go
'round the mulberry bush," except instead of a mulberry bush the kiddies are circling a prickly
pear cactus. The speaker describes how a "shadow" has paralyzed all of their activities, so they
are unable to act, create, respond, or even exist. He tries quoting expressions that begin "Life
is very long" and "For Thine is the Kingdom," but these, too, break off into fragments. In the
final lines, the "Mulberry Bush" song turns into a song about the end of the world. You might
expect the world to end with a huge, bright explosion, but for the Hollow Men, the world ends
with a sad and quiet "whimper."
Summary
The poem begins with two epigraphs alluding to two examples of "Hollow Men," one
from fiction, the other from history. Then we are introduced to the main characters: a group of
scarecrows leaning together. These Hollow Men narrate the poem in a chorus. They lament
their condition: their bodies paralyzed their language meaningless. On the other side of a
mythical river, dead ancestors see and judge the men. One of the Hollow Men relates his fear
of meeting the judging eyes of the dead while he is sleeping. They attempt to pray, but fail. In
a desert valley on the bank of an overflowing river under dying stars, the Hollow Men waver
between religious faith and despair. They dance around a cactus reciting a perverse version of
a child’s nursery rhyme. Then in an antiphonic parody of a Christian worship service, a priest
speaks and a congregation answers. The Shadow of death paralyzes all action and the
language of the chorus disintegrates as they attempt to recite the Lord’s Prayer. The poem and
the world end an anticlimactic whimper.
Themes
Dissatisfaction: You can't blame the Hollow Men for being dissatisfied. They are trapped in
the desert on the bank of a river they can't get across. In fact, you would expect them to be
even more ticked off than they are. But quite frankly, they can't even muster the enthusiasm
to complain. They try not to say anything at all. (When you don't have a proper soul, it's harder
to get worked up about soul-crushing misery.) The Hollow Men are like the souls in Canto 3 of
Dante's Inferno, who are so bland and cowardly that they are excluded even from the
fantastically grotesque torments of Hell.
Passivity: The Hollow Men have a bad case of "the Shadow." Like when you sit down to do
your homework, and you can't bring yourself do open your book, you too can blame the
Shadow. But the Hollow Men have it even worse. They can't even respond to their own
emotions. The Shadow represents their cowardice and the failure of their will. They can't even
look the "eyes" in, well, the eyes. They turn around and around like the wind and wait on the
bank of a river.
Identity: The Hollow Men all speak as one because they have the same identity: an empty
one. The words "hollow," "empty and "stuffed" are repeated again and again. Though we think
we're dealing with flesh-and-blood people who happen to be passive and wishy-washy, in
reality we're dealing with an empty void disguised as a person. The Hollow Men perform
ritualistic actions like prayer and have some emotions, like fear. It's important to remember,
though, that they are incapable of normal human reactions. They can't finish anything they
start. Back on earth, they might have been famous politicians or journalists, but now they're
just shells.
Dreams, Hopes, and Plans: At several points in the poem, the Hollow Men express vague
hopes of being rescued by "the eyes." Do they think that the souls with eyes will come back on
the last day of history and pluck them off the river to live among the stars? We don't know,
but somehow we don't count this outcome as very likely, particularly when they are so afraid
to meet the eyes even in their dreams. The stars represent the hope of salvation, but they
grow dimmer and will probably be gone soon. The Hollow Men have no concrete plans and
can't even finish a simple prayer.
Exile: In Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, Dante's guide Virgil explains that some souls are not
accepted by either Heaven or Hell. They didn't do any good in the world, but they didn't
actively work against the forces of good, either. They just ignored the universal conflict
between good and evil and drifted around aimlessly, pursuing their own empty interests and
desires. Dante felt that much of humanity fit into this category. It seems like the Hollow Men
are clearly meant to fall in a similar category. They are stuck on the bank of the River Acheron
and cannot cross over into death, even though they are dead themselves.
T.S Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis. He was the son of a prominent
industrialist who came from a well- connected Boston family. Eliot always felt the loss of his
family’s New England roots and seemed to be somewhat ashamed of his father’s business
success; throughout his life he continually sought to return to the epicenter of Anglo- Saxon
culture, first by attending Harvard and then by emigrating to England, where he lived from
1914 until his death. Eliot began graduate study in philosophy at Harvard and completed his
dissertation, although the outbreak of World War I prevented him from taking his
examinations and receiving the degree. By that time, though, Eliot had already written “The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and the War, which kept him in England, led him to decide to
pursue poetry full-time.
Eliot met Ezra Pound in 1914, as well, and it was Pound who was his main mentor and editor
and who got his poems published and noticed. During a 1921 break from his job as a bank
clerk, Eliot finished the work that was to secure him fame, The Waste Land. This poem heavily
edited by Pound and perhaps also by Eliot’s wife, Vivien, addressed the fragmentation and
alienation characteristic of modern culture, making use of these fragments to create a new
kind of poetry. It was also around this time that Eliot began to write criticism, partly in an
effort to explain his own methods. In 1925, he went to work for the publishing house Faber &
Faber. Despite the distraction of his wife’s increasingly serious bouts of mental illness, Eliot
was from this time until his death the preeminent literary figure in the English-speaking world;
indeed, he was so monumental that younger poets often went out of their way to avoid his
looming shadow, painstakingly avoiding all similarities of style.
Eliot became interested in religion in the later 1920s and eventually converted to Anglicanism.
His poetry from this point onward shows a greater religious bent, although it never becomes
dogmatic the way his sometimes controversial cultural criticism does. Four Quartets, his last
major poetic work, combines a Christian sensibility with a profound uncertainty resulting from
the war’s devastation of Europe. Eliot died in 1965 in London.