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Essay / Emptiness in The Hollow Men - 2831
Empty in The Hollow MenAfter Eliot published The Waste Land, he felt that he had not been able to fully convey the feeling of despair and emptiness in this work . Beginning with “Doris's Dream Songs” and “Eyes I Last Saw in Tears,” he explored these themes, eventually bringing all of these poems together in The Hollow Men. The final product is a work that, unlike The Waste Land and its final chance at redemption, has as its conclusion only the indelible emptiness of hollow men. Hollow men are those who, in life, have not acted according to their beliefs; they have resisted all action and, as a result, stagnate eternally in the "Shadow", a land between Heaven and Hell, completely isolated from both. Eliot's allusions give a familiar literary and popular basis to the setting, while the symbols and lyrical progression convey the futility and spiritual "brokenness" of men. The poem's initial epigraph, "Mistah Kurtz - He is Dead" is the first of many allusions. to Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness. Eliot uses the references to draw the reader's attention to the moral situation of Kurtz and others "who have crossed/with direct eyes, to the other realm of death." These men and Kurtz defined themselves by their actions, whether they were good or not. In the words of Baudelaire: “To the extent that we are human, what we do must be either evil or good; to the extent that we do evil or good, we are human; and it is better, paradoxically, to do evil than to do evil. "do nothing: at least we exist" (Drew 94). An accurate description of the condition of hollow men, this quote was also used in the review of Heart of Darkness. Thus, the (spiritual) stagnation of the "stormy river" and those who wait alongside it contrasts with the dynamic...... middle of paper ...... submission to a world that ends "not with fanfare but a whimper. » Works Cited Brady, Ann Patrick. Lyricism in the poetry of TS Eliot. London: Kennikat Press, 1978. Drew, Elizabeth. TS Eliot: The conception of his poetry. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949. Rubrics, Philip R. TS Eliot, revised edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982. Moody, A. David. The Cambridge Companion to TS Eliot. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1994. Moody, A. David. TS Eliot, poet. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1994. Raine, Craig. “The horrible audacity of TS Eliot”. The Guardian. 21. August 19, 1988. Roessel, David. "Guy Fawkes Day and the Peace of Versailles in 'The Hollow Men'". English Language Notes, September 1990. 52-58. Flight. 28. Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to TS Eliot. New York: octagonal books, 1974.