Hollow Men Analysis

“The Devils Language” by Marilyn Dumont and “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot are quite similar. They both critique their culture in the ways they see it. Nothing Is missing from each authors poem because it is critiquing the world as they have seen and learned from different experiences in their lives. Marilyn Dumont writes about “The great white way” (pg365, line 4) or white culture and the way that aboriginal culture is snuffed out or looked down upon. T.S. Eliot writes about people being too cowardly to be good or bad and also what happens after we die. Therefore, Marilyn Dumont and T.S. Eliot’s works are similar in the way that they see the wrongs in their cultures.

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

The Waste Land, written by T.S. Eliot, is poem portraying the lack and/or the corruption of culture in England during the post WWI period. Eliot uses a form of symbolism, in which he uses small pieces from popular literary works, to deliver his message. He begins by saying that culture during the post WWI period is a “barren wasteland.” Eliot goes on to support this claim by saying that people in England are in a sort of shock from the violence of World War I. Eliot believes that the lack of culture open doors for immorality to grow among the populace.

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

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

By looking through a critical lens at T Stearns Eliot’s poetry in light of his 20th century, modernist context, much is revealed about his personal and the rapidly evolving societal beliefs of that era. Through his repeating motif of time and fragmentation throughout his poems, Eliot reveals the prevalent feelings of isolation while in society along with the need to hide one’s feelings and emotions in this degrading society. His exploration of the use of ambiguity and stream of consciousness by Eliot, which is a characteristic of modernist artists, allows his work to resound over decades while being interpreted and differently understood by every audience that encounters them.

Elliot’s “The Waste Land.” Each author highlights the meaning of rivers; Crane begins with the East River, which then grows into the Hudson and onto the Mississippi and Eliot with the River Thames. To each author the river has a distinct meaning. To Eliot, the River Thames is symbolic of the collapse of western civilization, which doesn’t factor into Crane’s piece. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot-like most British poets-immortalize the Thames. Despite how he depicts this, in the modern world it is just a dirty river. Eliot’s background causes him to symbolize the Thames differently than a reader would in the U.S. Similarly, a reader outside of the U.S. will symbolize the East, Hudson, and Mississippi Rivers completely different than Crane and other Americans. Foster believes that the connection in how one interprets a symbol, and their personal background goes hand in hand. Otherwise, everyone would connect the Thames to Eliot’s beliefs, or the Mississippi and Hudson according to Crane’s ideas. Rather Foster believes that it is important for a reader to have the freedom to interpret the text

T.S. Eliot in the twentieth-century wrote what is today widely-regarded as one of the most important text of modernist poems, “The Waste Land.” This poem evaluates many aspects of ancient and contemporary culture and customs, and how the contemporary culture has degraded into a wasteland. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot conjures, through allusions to multiple religions and works of literature in five separate sections, a fragmented and seemingly disjointed poem. Eliot repeatedly alludes to western and eastern cultural foundation blocks to illustrate the cultural degradation prevalent in the modern era of England. One specific eastern example is brought up in the third section of the poem, which T.S. Eliot names “Fire Sermon,” an allusion to

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.

Most first time readers of Eliot's work would, probably, agree that his poems read as bleak and depressing. They would also say that many of his poems portray society as having a terminal illness, but when we look deeper you can see that amid the anguish not all is lost and there is hope to be found among the ruins. "The Wasteland", is an amalgamation of fragmented images that are disturbing and, yet, at times beautifully poetic. The juxtaposition of the ugly landscape and the lyricism with which it is conveyed lend the poem an

Eliot is seen to suggest that much like a scarecrow, the hollow men have a bleak and meaningless life, much like that of an existentialist, as their body is stuffed with nothingness described through the visual imagery of “headpiece filled with straw.” This comparison is also very metaphoric, as it indicates that the person is dead inside and so is lead to a life without emotion or passion to drive them, leaving the contemplation of their place within the

If René Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” embodies the essence of what it means to be a unified and rational Cartesian subject, then T.S. Eliot’s “heap of broken images” eagerly embraces its fragmented and alienated (post)modern counterpart. The message this phrase bears, resonates throughout the entire poem: from its title, “The Waste Land”, to its final mantra “Shantih shantih shantih”.

Eliot is not solely criticising modern life in the poem, it also serves as a reflection of Eliot’s social context and his own life, a product of its time.

            I think this style of writing is also a reflection of Eliot's feelings about the time.  Eliot was more of a Modernist than Victorian poet and as such held to beliefs like: there is no higher power in the universe, man is alone on this planet to govern his own affairs, everyone is truly alone, there is no unity, no support, for we live in a godless heartless world (Stacey Donohue).  The floating, confusing, jumbled mix of emotions and directions in this poem mirrors the modernist image of society.

“The Wasteland,” written by American-born British poet T.S. Eliot, is an epic poem that characterizes the Modernist movement. The poem captures the gloomy mindset of post-WWI society and profoundly guides the savage destruction of the Great War. “The Wasteland” was Eliot’s masterpiece and went on to become one of the most influential poems of the 20th century. It exemplifies many of his specific techniques and is well-known because of its inventive poetic form. In the poem, Eliot skillfully utilizes form, symbolism, and diction to depict the horrors of war’s aftermath, signify the death of Western culture, and convey the dreary worldwide view of the Modernist movement.