Essay on The Hollow Men

Could anybody ask for a better name then Sleepy Hollow for this town. All the people of the town are sleepy and inactive. There is also a hollow along the Hudson River which is right up close to the town. In this short story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving captures the setting well through description, how it affects the characters, and the way it fits with gothic attributes of this time.

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

The short story I have chosen to read by Washington Irving is 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.'; This story takes place in a little village on the Hudson River which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally known as Tarry Town. The main character in the story, Ichabod Crane, who 'tarried'; in Sleepy Hollow came about for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. The main point of the story began with the arrival of a Negro with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a party at the Van Tassel's mansion. After receiving the good news, Ichabod fixed up his best and only suit and borrowed a horse from Hans Van Ripper, in order to impress Mynheer Van Tassel's daughter, Katrina. He did so

The theme of “The Route of the Crows” is death. The story uses several dismal words such as death, darkness and silence, and builds up suspense with the use of ellipses. Throughout the text, various images of the crows show up one by one alluding to the death of one of the characters in the house—the sick mother. The quote “…as if there was a wedding or something” repeats twice in the short story emphasizing the calamity waiting to happen (574, 576). A woman in distress prevails in the plot of the story, too. The dying mother, unable to be understood by the narrator and Ziynet, tries to speak every once in a while but is ultimately ignored. She soon returns to her state of illness at the same time the crows come piling in one by one. The insertion of the crows illustrates a dawning of ill-fate symbolizing the arrival of death.

In this quote the “coffins of black'; symbolize the chimneys (554). Ultimately this all symbolizes the boys’ death because of their terrible life cleaning chimneys at such a young age. In the next stanza an Angel comes “And he opened the coffins and set them all free,'; which symbolizes the boys’ death and escape to heaven. All of these symbols cause feelings of sympathy in the reader, hopefully causing them to want to help these children escape their fate.

“Ink smeared like bird prints in snow” is the first simile that appears in the poem and serves multiple purposes. The most obvious one is the creation of imagery, where it compares the black words the persona writes on paper to the bird’s foot prints that are left behind when a bird walks on snow. The imagery alludes that the persona will leave a “footprint” in the form of a note that people can use to trace her path but she will never be there anymore. From line thirty-six to forty, the poet creates another imagery of a sparrow (a tiny and a delicate bird) flying in windy snowing weather. The sparrow is dizzied and sullied by the violent wind; it encounters a lot of difficulties and fear. In this imagery, the persona compares herself with the delicate bird. She compares the challenges that the sparrow goes through to the suffering she encounters relating to her parents.

The theme of emptiness is seen throughout Thomas’ poems. The wartime poet writes of his memory of livelihood and activity in villages, such as the one described in ‘Aspens’, and then how it begins to disappear as a result of war. This is shown as the village is left with a ‘lightless pane and footless road’ causing the village to appear as ‘empty as sky’ and this simile gives a sense of vastness of the effects of the war, emphasising on the emptiness in the poem. Further, the mention of the ‘cross-roads to a ghostly room’ explicates that the village is so empty that it is leading nowhere. This metaphor is ironic as cross-roads are suggestively open gateways and a sense of choice in direction. However this connotation is altered as Thomas uses the metaphor ‘ghostly room’, to portray the vacant village and this is supported by the cross-roads as they lead to emptiness and isolation. This is also seen in ‘Old Man’ as the paradox ‘only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end’ gives a sense of no lead despite the fact that an avenue should lead somewhere. It is clear here that Thomas’ state of depression is

The other section where symbolism is evident is “Small Porch in the Woods.” It is divided into several poems. In the first one, there is the mention of “unshifting star” which represents a change that is undisturbed. It is the turning point of the society. Despite the challenges communities face in their life, their ambition leads them towards achieving their objectives in life. The second poem under this section is about a heavy rain that fell in the month of April. Heavy rain is the representation of unhappy moments. The description presented by the narrator shows that it is a sad moment where everything is carried away. Throughout the poem, the rain is seen, as a lesson

. . should burn and rave at the close of day”(2). This means that old men should fight when they are dying and their age should not prevent them from resisting death. Another example of personification in the poem is “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”(8). This line personifies the men’s frail deeds by saying that they could have danced. This means that the potential actions of the men could have flourished and contributed greatly to their lives. The metaphor “. . . words had forked no lightning. . .”(5) is about how the men had done nothing significant with their lives. They had not achieved anything great or caused a major change. The simile “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” is about how even grave and serious men will fight against death for as long as they can. Another notable example of figurative language within the poem is “. . . blinding sight”(13). This oxymoron details how the men can see very well and it is very obvious to them that they will die soon, but they know that they can control how they will leave this world. There is an abundance of imagery within this poem, a few examples of which are “. . . danced in a green bay”(8), and “. . . caught and sang the sun in flight”(10) . These examples of imagery are both appealing to the sense of sight by using descriptive words such as “Green” and “danced” in the first example and words such as “caught” and “flight” among others. The second example also appeals to the sense of sound by

In this, one could see that the speaker might be talking about death: “And when at Night –“; and how the speaker prefers the comfort of his/her faith over the comforts of the world: “I guard My Master’s Head - / ‘Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s / Deep Pillow – to have shared-” (13-16). The tone of this poem ranges from emptiness, to fullness, to joy, to complete satisfaction, and one can follow this progression through the stanzas. In the beginning, the subject, or character, was flat

The short story of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” by Washington Irving introduced the character Ichabod Crane. Ichabod’s name means “No Glory” which is the essence of the character himself. Ichabod’s legacy became a sort of an old wives’ tale by which he believed in so much he ultimately fell victim to. Ichabod is a character that is a bit of an underdog that you feel compassion for but inevitably conclude he received the outcome he deserves.

This is supported in the poem by the description of the moth as a "rigid satin cloth." The satin cloth can be seen like a bridal dress, suggestions of good, but the negativity of "rigid" implies perhaps on the lining of a coffin where a rigid body would lie. In the second part of the octave the speaker describes the scene again. He compares the scene and the assorted characters to "a witch's broth" (line 6), and Carter claims that this part introduces ironies regarding the observer's feelings towards the scene he saw. The speaker views those characters as "assorted characters of death and blight" (line 4). But they are there to "begin the morning right" (line 5) - a positive saying which you wouldn't exact to hear associated with death and blight. This juxtaposing of "blight" and "right" emphasizes the irony. How can the morning be "right" if the scene culminate in death?

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.

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,