By T. S. Eliot, Written and Published in 1925
Poem Mistah Kurtz he dead. A penny for the Old Guy. Meaning 2 allusions 1) Kurtz in Heart of Darkness a spiritually hollow man. Notice diction pidgin or creole. As if a slave is answering a question. Slave is also passive and humble; hollow in a different way.
Poem Mistah Kurtz he dead. A penny for the Old Guy. Meaning 2 allusions 2) Guy Fawkes Day on November 5 th in England to commemorate his 1605 attempt at blowing up the Parliament building, children buy fireworks to burn straw figures of him. In this way he symbolizes being physically hollow. Secondary meaning poor old guy needs alms.
Various interpretations have been issued: Post World War I survivors of the Great War are left hollow and remember the dead Possible religious commentary a soul s religious journey from death through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory or Death s Dream Kingdom, Death s Twilight Kingdom, and Death s Other Kingdom Criticism of societal norms and civilization Even as a possible reaction to Eliot s loss of his wife through her betrayal
Written approximately from 1890-1950 in the Modernist Literature style. Moved away from the merely personal to an intellectual statement about the world. Much of this period was inspired by disillusionment and a desire to get away from traditional and restrictive diction. The speaker often wrestles with the fundamental question of self. See experimentation with genre and form such as in T.S. Eliot s The Waste Land which was considered the predecessor to Hollow Man, Esra Pound, E.E. Cummings, T.S. Eliot are a few examples of Modernist poets
Repetition structural, synonyms, rhythmic (nursery rhymes), negation, binary opposition Allusions Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, The Lord s Prayer, Julius Caesar, Dante Symbolic imagery bodies, eyes, voices, setting, time Rhyme and rhythm partial rhymes, not consistent. Rhythm is uneven except for the stanzas at the end. Vague deictic marks these indicate the time, person, and space taking part in a text. For example We in the poem can refer to could refer to the speaker or a broader group of people. Enjambment(breaking of the syntactic unit at the end of the line or between two verses) and stream of consciousness
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 rat s feet over broken glass In our dry cellar. Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed 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. Starts with a contradition we are hollow and empty, yet at the same time filled like scarecrows. How is this? Our heads are filled with absurdities causing our souls to become empty and our lives futile. We lean together possibly in submission or prayer without loud and meaningful voices. Note the similies here our voices are like wind and rat s feet, they are ineffectual and meaningless, the wind can t dry the grass and the rats are too small to get cut by the glass. Our voices have been dried (by whom? is there a connotation here?) Like corpses, we appear to be: External shapes without structure, shadows without vibrancy (paradox) We have no force or movement, only stagnation (oxymoron, paralyzed force) Yet, we are remembered by those who have crossed over to a parallel realm
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.
This is the dead land, This is the 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 Walking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness. Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
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. Allusion gathered on the beach of the tumid river - to Dante s Inferno, waiting at Limbo or the first circle of Hell, unable to beg redemption from God. 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.
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, A perverse twist on the song Here we go round the mulberry bush it implies further darkness to this nursery rhyme. Between the motion And the act, 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. Allusion to the Lord s Prayer The gunpowder plot ended not with an explosion, but with the hanging and whimper of Guy Fawkes. Another allusion.