The Hollow Men
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
-
For other uses, see The Hollow Men (disambiguation).
The Hollow Men is a Modernist poem by T.S. Eliot. It was published in 1925 and evokes depression and sadness after World War I. The poem alludes to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Dante's Paradiso and Inferno, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, among others.
The poet depicts figures, "gathered on the beach of [a] tumid river" - drawing considerable influence from Dante's third and fourth cantos of the [Inferno] which describes limbo, the first circle of hell - unable to communicate or express themselves. Dancing "round a prickly pear", the figures worship false gods, reflecting Eliot's interpretation of Western culture after the First World War. The reference to Guy Fawkes alludes to the straw-man effigy that is burned each year in parts of England on Bonfire Night.
Told from five perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into "death's dream kingdom", Eliot describes how we the living will be seen by "those who have crossed with direct eyes... not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men -- the stuffed men."
The final stanza may be the most quoted of all of Eliot's poetry;
- 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 reflects upon Eliot’s skepticism about the men of his time, the posterity, and society as a whole. Eliot tells us that they are the "hollow men" with "heads all filled with straw, alas". He apparently doesn't stand by the decisions of World War I; he is devastated by the depravity of Europe after the war. He fears that the people of future ages will scorn his generation for their foolishness, but he begs that they be remembered as the hollow men rather than wanton fools. Eliot expresses his disdain for all of society. He quotes the Bible, but cannot finish the quote. He can only get "for thine is the..." out... this shows his anger at God and the religious establishment.
The Hollow Men depicts more than just Eliot's opinion about World War I, it also illustrates his ideas about many of man's greater struggles.
He depicts his frustration with the viscosity of bureacracy "Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless" and in his scene at the bank of the Tumid river, showing man in his inability to cross into either hell itself or to even beg redemption, unable to speak with God over the deafening gusts of the pandemonius wind that inhabits Dante's Limbo.
The second stanza seems to play to man's tendency not to live up to expectation. "Shape without form and shade without color".
Here we go round the prickly pear also alludes to man's desire for the material and its tendency to hurt him. At five o' clock in the morning man runs around the prickly pear.
[edit] Influence
Eliot's poem was the inspiration for The Hollow Men, a piece for trumpet and orchestra by composer Vincent Persichetti.
The Nevil Shute novel, On The Beach, takes its name from the 10th stanza of the poem.
The character Cortana from the Halo series of video games quotes the final stanza in the trailer for Halo 3 and in the Cortana Letters, though her emphasis on This would imply that thing end not with a whimper but a bang. The poem is also quoted in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty by a character justifying the need for censorship in the Information Age.
Eliot's poem was also strong influence on Francis Ford Coppola and the movie Apocalypse Now. In the film the character Colonel Kurtz is depicted reading parts of "The Hollow Men." The poem's epigraph is "Mistah Kurtz - he dead" which is a quote from Conrad's Heart of Darkness (although Colonel Kurtz is not shown reading those particular words). Heart of Darkness was the inspiration for the storyline of Apocalypse Now.
The song "Hollow Again" by the Christian rock band Project 86 is based on this poem and the line "This is the way the world ends" is repeated many times.
The song "Death of the Robot" by the Experimental Rock band Tub Ring references "The Hollow Men," repeating the phrase "This is the way the universe ends" and "not with a whimper but with a bang."
The song "Meant to Live" by the alternative rock/Christian rock band Switchfoot is based on this poem.
The last line is referred to in Stephen King's magnum opus "The Stand"
