Allusions In The Hollow Men

Eliot uses allusions and imagery to make several references to characters—both real and fictional—to vicariously show how Prufrock feels. The first allusion is an epigraph from Dante’s Inferno:

Another famous and influential work from T.S. Eliot is The Hollow Men. Likely influenced by World War I, T. S. Eliot portrays a disconnect from humanity and a disillusionment with typical beliefs as a source of human despair in The Hollow Men. The “hollow men” that the work is centered around are depicted devoid of any human qualities that might provide them a relief from despair, such as hope or faith. As is written in “T. S. Eliot's Indigenous Critical Concepts and 'The Hollow Men'” by Muhammad Khan Sangi and others, “In this poem the human beings have been shown devoid of the qualities of faith, moral strength, of personality, determination and that of humanity; they are like empty bodies, lacking all human virtues” (Sangi et al para 4). No matter how these qualities were lost to the individuals, the result is constant and predictable: the individuals feel an inescapable despair. When one has nothing to anticipate in life, no expectations or hopes, then life loses its meaning. This is the world that the hollow men live in perpetually. The entire work, as Sangi describes, “is a cry of despair unrelieved by hope. The peculiarity of the poem is that it is an inner drama with the utmost economy of words. The images echo the deadness of sensibility and the emptiness of hollow men who, like the effigies, are fit only for burning” (Sangi et al para 5). Again, the hollow men are depicted as worthless, insofar as they are compared to effigies, the only purpose of which is to be

This is apparent in The Hollow Men in lines 13-15 when the poem says: "Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost"(Collected Poems 1909-1935 56). The meaning to of deaths other kingdom does not seem to be hell or heaven it seems to me to be somewhere else. In lines 57-60 Eliot is talking about where the hollow men meet, which is at the tumid river. In Heart Of Darkness "Marlow tells of his journey into a nightmare kingdom of death, the heart of darkness in the forests of the Congo". Conrad describes Africa as a "Kingdom of Death" and the Congo River relates to the "tumid river". Let me digress to the hollowness of Heart of Darkness. The former, Helen Gardner suggests that: " 'The Hollow Men' exhibits the feeling of total meaninglessness, the extremity of skepticism which Marlow said he felt on the brink of death: 'a vision of grayness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things....' "(Landscape As Symbol In The Poetry Of T.S. Eliot 92). The darkness and the hollowness are the same thing. They are the emptiness of moral strength and faith. It is what Marlow feels as he is on the brink of death.

American born poet, T.S. Eliot reflects modernistic ideas of isolation, individual perception and human consciousness in his many poems. His poems express the disillusionment of the post–World War I generation with both literary and social values and traditions. In one of Eliot’s most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was published in 1915, a speaker who is very unhappy with his life takes readers on a journey through the hell he is living in. In this journey, Prufrock criticizes the well-dressed, upstanding citizens who love their material pleasures more than they love other people, while explaining he feels ostracized from the society of women. Eliot’s use of isolation, human consciousness and individual perception is quite evident in his dramatic monologue within the story of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock wants to be seen as a normal citizen who can find friends or a lover, but his anxiety-driven isolation forces him to live a life that relates more to Hell than paradise. In over examining every fine detail of his life, Prufrock perceives himself as useless and even a waste of life. By using many poetic devices including repetition, personification, and imagery Eliot drives readers to feel the painful reality of Prufrock’s life. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S Eliot uses modernistic ideas and poetic devices to portray how Prufrock’s life relates to Hell while simultaneously criticizing social aspects of the younger post–World War I generation.

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

“It says to oblivion: not me!” (Oliver 20) “The Black Snake”. Summarize what happens in your poem here (2 sentences). The poem brings death and the thought of life and death into a brighter light. Preview what poetic elements you will be analyzing in your poem. The deeper meaning of the poem is that death is harsh and we should cherish our lives this is developed using (fill in your three poetic elements.).

At a point in all mortal’s existence, there will be a moment when their soul is between two states of being, waiting to be judged. Without the fearlessness and faith to move on to the afterlife, they will spend eternity stuck in purgatory. When T. S. Eliot wrote “The Hollow Men,” he used symbolism, imagery, and repetition to share his insight to address the lack of courage and faith that plagues every human being.

In Robert Pack’s poem “To an Empty Page”, the narrator is uncertain about what comes with death. He worries about his future and what may happen to him. As he asks questions into the emptiness, he finds answers in the echoes of his voice. Robert Pack uses literary devices such as rhetorical questions, selection of detail, metaphors, and juxtaposition to construct the meaning of his poem.

T.S Eliot’s poem, “The winter evening settles down” is a short, simple to read poem with several different examples of imagery. Eliot uses descriptive words, for instance, “withered leaves”, “broken blinds”, and “lonely cab-horse” (lines 7-10). He paints an extremely bleak image of a town that seems to be deserted of people. The tone of the poem plays hand-in-hand with the imagery used. This town is an unpleasant place where it has seemed to be neglected for some years now. Eliot’s use of imagery takes the reader to this deserted, torpid place; however, at the same time, his goal is to bring the life back into this grim town.

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and

T.S. Eliot, a notable twentieth century poet, wrote often about the modern man and his incapacity to make decisive movements. In his work entitled, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'; he continues this theme allowing the reader to view the world as he sees it, a world of isolation and fear strangling the will of the modern man. The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante's Inferno, an allusion to Dante's character who speaks from Hell only because he believes that the listener can not return to earth and thereby is impotent to act on the knowledge of his conversation. In his work, Eliot uses this quotation to foreshadow the idea that his

The end of The Hollow Men can only be the beginning of a deep and long reflection for thoughtful readers. T.S. Eliot, who always believed that in his end is his beginning, died and left his verse full of hidden messages to be understood, and codes to be deciphered. It is this complexity, which is at the heart of modernism as a literary movement, that makes of Eliot’s poetry very typically modernist. As Ezra Pound once famously stated, Eliot truly did “modernize himself”. Although his poetry was subject to important transformations over the course of his

This reinforces Eliot's claim that, 'Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood'. The theme's that run throughout 'The Wasteland', such as sterility, isolation and death, are applicable to both the landscapes and the characters. When drawn together, it is these themes that give the poem structure and strength, and the use of myth mingled with historic, anthropological, religious and metaphysical images reinforce its universal quality.

Eliot’s use of symbolism can be very disorienting. It has been proposed that this choppy medley is actually furthering his point by representing the “ruins” of a culture. An article

This epigraph may serve as a way to connect with a certain group of scholars, as not many people speak the language it is written in, however, when it is read in its original context it may mean that Eliot does not foresee a very bright future, which would be in tune with the rest of the poem, furthermore this reference strongly hints at the use of tarot cards and the notion of randomness in the rest of the poem. The fact that this epigraph is in a foreign language greatly contributes to the theme of the poem and is therefore discussed in the next section of this paper. Followed by the epigraph is a quotation from the Anglican burial service, which serves as the subtitle of the first part of the poem: “1. The Burial of the Dead”. This leads us to additional intertextuality,