Eliot: The Hollow Men

1. Pre-Reading Context

·       Understand T.S. Eliot’s Modernist style, including fragmentation, symbolism, and allusions.

·       Familiarize yourself with historical influences, such as World War I, post-war disillusionment, and Eliot’s religious concerns.

·       Note Eliot’s association with Ezra Pound, who influenced the poem’s structure.

2. Structural Analysis

·       Identify the five sections and their thematic progression.

·       Observe Eliot’s use of free verse, irregular meter, and repetition.

·       Examine the fragmentary nature of the poem—how it reflects existential despair.

3. Thematic Exploration

·       Spiritual emptiness: The “hollow men” symbolize moral and spiritual decay.

·       Post-war disillusionment: The poem reflects the loss of faith and meaning in modern life.

·       Symbolism: Analyze key symbols like “the dead land,” “prickly pear,” and “falling shadow”.

·       Religious references: Identify Biblical allusions, Dante’s Inferno, and The Lord’s Prayer.

4. Literary Devices & Allusions

·       Allusions: Heart of Darkness, Guy Fawkes, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

·       Imagery: Barren landscapes, broken statues, fading stars.

·       Repetition & Parallelism: “This is the way the world ends”, reinforcing despair.

Interdisciplinary Approaches

T.S. Eliot’s poetry, particularly The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, and Prufrock, can be understood through the lens of Modernist art, music, and cinema, as they share similar themes of fragmentation, alienation, and experimentation.

1. Modernist Art & Eliot’s Poetry

·       Eliot’s poetry mirrors the fragmentation and abstraction seen in Cubism and Surrealism.

·       Pablo Picasso’s Cubist works, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, break traditional perspective—similar to Eliot’s disjointed narrative and shifting voices in The Waste Land.

·       Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, with their eerie, empty landscapes, resemble Eliot’s desolate imagery in The Hollow Men.

·       Salvador Dalí’s surrealism, with dreamlike distortions, parallels Eliot’s symbolic and subconscious explorations.

2. Music & Eliot’s Poetic Rhythm

·       Eliot’s poetry employs musicality, repetition, and abrupt shifts, akin to Modernist composers.

·       Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) uses disruptive rhythms and tonal shifts, much like Eliot’s fragmented poetic structure.

·       Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal compositions reflect Eliot’s disjointed, non-linear poetic flow.

·       Eliot’s use of refrains and echoes in The Hollow Men resembles jazz improvisation, where themes are repeated and altered.

3. Cinema & Eliot’s Poetic Vision

·       Eliot’s poetry shares techniques with Modernist cinema, particularly montage and stream-of-consciousness narration.

·       Sergei Eisenstein’s montage editing, which juxtaposes images for emotional impact, mirrors Eliot’s fragmented poetic structure.

·       Charlie Chaplin’s silent films, depicting urban alienation, resonate with Eliot’s themes of modern loneliness.

·       German Expressionist films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, use shadowy, distorted visuals, akin to Eliot’s dark, surreal imagery.

·       Born: 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. Died: 1965, London, England.

·       Thomas Stearns Eliot was a Modernist poet, playwright, essayist, and literary and social critic of the 20th century.

·       He moved from the United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and became a British citizen in 1927, renouncing his American citizenship.

·       Education & Philosophical Influences:

o   Studied at Harvard University, where he was influenced by George Santayana, Josiah Royce, and Bertrand Russell.

o   Explored Indian philosophy and Sanskrit, focusing on the Upanishads and Buddhist thought, which later shaped his poetic themes.

o   His engagement with German idealism, particularly Immanuel Kant, informed his philosophical approach to literature.

Literary Experiments & Innovations

Eliot was a pioneer of poetic experimentation:

·       Fragmentation & Collage Technique:

o   His poetry, especially The Waste Land (1922), employed fragmentation, juxtaposing voices, historical references, and literary allusions.

o   He used multiple perspectives, shifting between speakers and time periods to reflect the fractured nature of modern existence.

·       Stream of Consciousness & Interior Monologue:

o   The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) introduced interior monologue, capturing the psychological depth of the modern individual.

o   His characters often express hesitation, alienation, and existential doubt, mirroring the anxieties of the 20th century.

·       Mythic Method:

o   Eliot advocated for the use of myth to structure modern poetry, as seen in The Waste Land, which draws on The Grail legend, Dante, and Hindu scriptures.

o   He believed myths provided order and meaning in an otherwise chaotic modern world.

·       Objective Correlative:

o   He introduced the concept of the objective correlative, arguing that emotions should be conveyed through external symbols and imagery, rather than direct expression.

·       Allusive & Intertextual Style:

o   His poetry is dense with literary references, incorporating Shakespeare, Dante, the Bible, and Eastern philosophy.

o   This technique created a layered, intellectual complexity, requiring readers to engage deeply with the text.

Contribution to the Modernist Movement

Eliot was one of the leading figures of Modernism, shaping its themes and aesthetics:

·       Rejection of Romanticism:

o   He moved away from Romantic subjectivity and emotional excess, favoring intellectual rigor and structured poetic form.

·       Influence on New Criticism:

o   His essays, particularly Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), laid the foundation for New Criticism, emphasizing close reading and textual analysis.

·       The Waste Land & Post-War Disillusionment:

o   The Waste Land (1922) became a defining Modernist text, capturing the spiritual and cultural crisis of the post-World War I generation.

·       Role in Literary Journals:

o   As editor of The Criterion, Eliot shaped Modernist literary taste, promoting writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ezra Pound.

·       Theater & Poetic Drama:

o   He revived verse drama, blending poetry with theatrical storytelling in plays like Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

·       He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 for his pioneering contributions to poetry.

Ezra Pound’s Role in Eliot’s Development

·       Mentorship & Editorial Influence:

o   Pound recognized Eliot’s talent early on and championed his work, helping him gain recognition in literary circles.

o   He played a crucial role in editing and refining Eliot’s poetry, particularly The Waste Land (1922), transforming it into a concise, fragmented masterpiece.

o   Eliot acknowledged Pound’s contribution by dedicating The Waste Land to him with the phrase il miglior fabbro (“the better craftsman”).

·       Modernist Collaboration:

o   Both poets were central figures in the Modernist movement, advocating for experimentation, fragmentation, and intellectual depth in poetry.

o   Pound introduced Eliot to Imagism, emphasizing precise language and economy of expression, which influenced Eliot’s poetic style.

o   Their correspondence reveals intense discussions on poetic form, literary tradition, and cultural criticism.

·       Literary Networks & Publishing:

o   Pound helped Eliot publish his early works, including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which established Eliot as a leading Modernist poet.

o   He encouraged Eliot to engage with European literary traditions, broadening his intellectual scope.

o   Eliot later became editor of The Criterion, a literary journal that promoted Modernist writers, including Pound.

·       Personal & Philosophical Differences:

o   While Pound was more radical in his political and economic views, Eliot maintained a more conservative, structured approach to literature.

o   Despite their differences, Eliot remained deeply appreciative of Pound’s influence on his poetic craft.

·  The final version of the poem was published in 1925, but it originated in an earlier lyric, Song for the Opherion. Eliot had initially wanted to include Song for the Opherion in The Waste Land, but Ezra Pound dissuaded him, believing it did not fit the poem’s structure.

·  The poem is divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines, reflecting Eliot’s structured yet fragmented approach to poetic composition.

·  The opening epigraph, “Mistah Kurtz—he dead”, references Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, linking the poem to themes of moral decay and existential emptiness.

·  The poem explores spiritual desolation, portraying individuals as “hollow men”—souls devoid of purpose, trapped in a liminal state between life and death.

·  Eliot employs symbolism and repetition, particularly in the famous closing lines: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” These lines encapsulate the disillusionment of the post-war generation, emphasizing the gradual decline of civilization rather than a dramatic collapse.

·  The poem’s imagery of barren landscapes, broken statues, and fading stars reinforces its themes of cultural decay and existential despair.

·  Eliot’s use of free verse and irregular meter mirrors the disjointed, fragmented nature of modern existence.

·  The poem incorporates religious references, including allusions to Dante’s Inferno, the Bible, and Christian eschatology, reflecting Eliot’s evolving spiritual concerns.

·  The Hollow Men serves as a bridge between Eliot’s early Modernist works and his later religious poetry, particularly Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943).

·       Free Verse & Irregular Line Lengths: Eliot avoids the constraints of traditional meter, allowing shifts in tone and pacing.

·       Repetition & Parallelism: Phrases like “This is the way the world ends” enhance the poem’s hypnotic effect.

·       Fragmentation & Abrupt Breaks: The disjointed structure mirrors the hollow, fragmented existence of its subjects.

·       Occasional Rhyme: Some lines subtly employ rhyme (“Sightless, unless / The eyes reappear”), reinforcing thematic moments.

·       Biblical Cadence: Sections echo liturgical language, lending a solemn, prophetic tone.

Despite its lack of formal structure, Eliot’s careful arrangement of sounds and repetition creates an eerie, rhythmic flow that leads to the themes of spiritual emptiness and existential despair.

1. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

·       The opening epigraph, “Mistah Kurtz—he dead”, refers to Kurtz, a character in Conrad’s novel, symbolizing moral decay and the collapse of civilization.

2. Guy Fawkes & English Folklore

·       The second epigraph, “A penny for the Old Guy”, references the Guy Fawkes tradition, where children ask for money to buy fireworks for Bonfire Night.

·       The “Old Guy” may also symbolize Charon, the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology.

3. Dante’s Inferno

·       Lines 15-16 reference Canto 3 of Inferno, where souls are trapped in a limbo-like state, neither fully damned nor saved—mirroring the hollow men’s existential paralysis.

·       The “tumid river” (line 60) likely alludes to Acheron, a branch of the River Styx, which souls must cross to enter the underworld.

4. The Lord’s Prayer

·       The phrase “For Thine is the Kingdom” (line 77) alludes to the ending of the Lord’s Prayer, reinforcing the poem’s religious themes.

5. Nursery Rhyme: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

·       Lines 68-71 modify the children’s song into “Here we go round the prickly pear”, symbolizing sterility and futility.

6. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

·       The phrase “Falls the Shadow” (lines 76-90) echoes Brutus’s speech, reflecting the gap between intention and action.

First Epigraph: The first epigraph is a quotation from Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, which explores Western imperialism.

Second Epigraph: The second epigraph is a variation of an expression used by English schoolchildren to ask for money to buy fireworks to blow up straw dolls representing the traitor Guy Fawkes. The “Old Guy” may also represent Charon, the ferryman who would take souls across the Acheron into the realm of death if you gave him a coin.

Lines 15-16: In Canto 3 of Dante’s Inferno, a large group of souls has been excluded from Hell because they were not “lost” or “violent” enough. They can’t take sides in the battle between Good and Evil. We know from other poems, such as The Waste Land, that this canto resonated deeply with Eliot.

Lines 20-22: In heaven, Dante no longer feels shamed by Beatrice’s gaze, but instead, marvels in her beauty, which continues to grow as they advance to the uppermost strata of heaven.  Once the invitation for redemption is accepted and virtue is restored, the formerly hollow man has no reason to feel shame when looking into the eyes of the virtuous.  “Death’s dream kingdom” is heaven; in order to have reached that paradise, even if by means of a guide, the soul must already have been purified.  He does not see the same shame-causing eyes he saw originally. Instead, he sees a gaze that he can meet.

Lines 23-28: These lines resemble Dante’s description of the Earthly Paradise, when still seen from afar in Cantos xxvii-xxix.  Dante used the star as a symbol representing God or Mary.

Line 32: In the section “The Propitiation of Vermin by Farmers” in The Golden Bough, Frazer discusses both the dressing in animal skins for ritualistic purposes, as well as the custom of hanging up the corpse of a member of a crop-damaging species as a possible origin of the scarecrow.

Line 33: In The Waste Land Eliot associates the “man with three staves” a card in the Tarot with the Fisher King

Line 35: In the Inferno, spirits are blown about by the wind, and in Heart of Darkness, the native dies just because he left the shutter open, “He had no restraint- just like Kurtz- a tree swayed in the wind.”

37-38: Both Dante the Pilgrim and Marlow must face a meeting they greatly fear.  Dante must meet Beatrice and face her divine beauty.  In doing so he can’t help but be reminded of all of his own sins and failings, but by crossing the River Lethe, which flows in shadow, he can be purified and look upon her.  At this point, he has completed the unpleasant stages of his journey, which is really an attempt to save his own soul, so that after his own death he will be able to join her in heaven.  Marlow also faces the crux of his journey when he faces Kurtz’s fiancée, but he chooses a darker path.  He follows through on his word to Kurtz by giving her his letters, but he can not bring himself to tell the truth about his last words.  In his submission to the heart of darkness, he faces a moral twilight in which he chooses the shadow, literally, as the sun sets.  The twilight that sets in is the choice the soul must face between light and darkness.

ll. 39-44: These lines are thought to be material originally discarded from The Waste Land as they closely resemble lines from sections I and V both in language and imagery.  The stone images (and ‘broken stone’ in l. 51) suggest idolatrous worship.  “The worship of stones is a degradation of a higher form of worship,”

l. 47: Hear of Darkness: “We live, as we dream – alone.” Line 60: The river is most likely Acheron, a branch of the mythical River Styx. Acheron and the ferryman Charon also appear in Canto 3 of Dante’s Inferno.

ll. 49-51: To the end, Kurtz’s Intended is confident in his faithfulness, goodness, and unending love for her, while in reality he has turned to the worship of pagan forces (stone is symbolic of idolatrous and thus, non-Christian worship).

ll. 52-56: The valley Marlow walks through upon his arrival to the Congo, half excavated, littered with abandoned objects, and hopeless native laborers, “it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno … Black shapes crouched, lay sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.”

l. 56: Possibly the “new jaw bone of an ass” (Judges xv, 15-19) with which Samson slew a thousand Philistines.

ll. 57-60: These lines allude to all four major sources: the last meeting places and tumid rivers encountered by the Pilgrim on his journey, the element of conspiracy (last meetings before the treasonous act) in Julius Caesar and of the Gunpowder Plot, and Marlow’s experiences with the secretive trading company, “It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy.”  At the trading station he finds that most of the white employees occupy themselves “by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way.  There was an air of plotting about the station, but nothing came of it, of course it was as unreal as everything else.”  This is the final meeting of a doomed conspiracy, the meeting of the lost, hollow souls before they sentenced to the inferno.

In Canto 3 of Dante’s Inferno Dante’s guide Virgil says, “They have no hope of death, and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other lot. The world does not permit report of them. Mercy and justice hold them in contempt. Let us not speak of them – look and pass by.”

l. 60: Dante’s River Acheron flowing around hell or the river Marlow follows into the African ‘heart of darkness’.

ll. 61-62: If the eyes reappear, so does hope and the possibility for salvation.  At Dante the Pilgrim’s first meeting with Beatrice, her eyes were shameful for him to look upon, yet they also signaled the possibility of his redemption.  When he is able to look upon her again it signifies a change in the state of his soul, it has been purified.  When Marlow meets Kurtz’s Intended, he is looked upon by the eyes of a pure spirit, “The room seemed to have drown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which dark eyes looked out at me.  Their glance was guileless, profound, and trustful.”  That moment Marlow’s chance to resist the darkness which has penetrated modern life.

ll. 63-64: In Paradiso xxx the Pilgrim’s vision of the highest level of heaven is of a rose whose petals are formed by Mary and the saints. In Paradiso xxxi he refers to God as the ‘single star’, and in Paradiso xxxii and elsewhere he refers to Mary as a rose.

l. 65: The twilight refers to Marlow’s meeting with Kurtz’s Intended, to the twilight that is physically gathering, and to the hopelessness in Marlow’s own soul.  Twilight represents a choice, but it can also be the mere memory of that choice.

ll. 72-90: Taken almost directly from Julius Caesar II.i:

BRUTUS

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interm is
Like a phantasma, or hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of men,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.

Another possible source is the line “Between the void and its pure issue” from Valéry’s The Cemetery by the Sea.  In 1924, Eliot wrote an introduction to Valéry’s Le Serpent in which he compared that line to Brutus’s lines.  He viewed The Cemetery by the Sea as an expression of Valery’s melancholy skepticism attributed to “the agony of creation … the mind constantly mocks and dissuades, and urges the creative activity in vain.” The three central stanzas of this section closely resemble Valery’s in their phrasal structure and emphatic rhythm and also in their thematic contrast between ‘idea’ and ‘reality’.

Lines 68-71: The italicized song lyrics are a variation of the children’s ditty, “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush.”

l. 76: In 1935 Eliot accepted a suggestion that he had taken the ‘Shadow’ from “Non sum qualis eram” (I am not now as once I was) Ernest Dowson’s most famous poem.  It contains the phrases “Then fell thy shadow” and “Then falls the shadow.”

Line 77: “For Thine is the Kingdom” alludes to the ending of the Lord’s Prayer, sometimes known as the “Our Father.” The full ending goes: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.”

Line 83: Like l. 77 and l. 91, this line is italicized, suggesting a quotation. In this case it is from Conrad’s An Outcast of the Islands, in which a broken man is punished by being kept alive rather than by being killed.

Lines 86-87: From Aristotelian philosophy, “matter only has potency until form gives it existence”.

Lines  88-89: From Platonic philosophy, “the essence is the inapprehensible ideal, which finds material expression in its descent to the lower, material plane of reality.”

Lines 95-98: The end of the poem modifies a different part of the “Mulberry Bush” song.

Ø  What is/are the source/s of the title of the poem?

A.    T.S. Eliot claimed to have made up the title, “The Hollow Men” from combining “The Hollow Land”, the title of a romance by William Morris, with Kipling’s title of a poem, “The Broken Men”.

Some scholars also assume that the possible sources of the title may be Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness where the character Kurtz is referred to as a “hollow sham” and “hollow at the core”.

Ø  The title of the poem signifies sense of failure and exile.

Ø  The Epigraph to the section heading ‘Mistah Kurtz –he dead’ is an allusion to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In his novella, Conrad portrays the emptiness of human nature. Mister Kurtz, a European slave trader who had travelled to Africa in order to go on with his business, is a character who lacks a soul, thus, a true `Hollow Man´.

Ø  The Epigraph to the poem ‘A penny for the Old Guy’ alludes to England’s November 5^th tradition of Guy Fawkes Day. In 1605, Guy Fawkes unsuccessfully tried to blow up the Parliament building. Eliot’s quote A penny for the Old Guy is called out on this holiday by children who are attempting to buy fireworks in order to burn straw figures of Fawkes, who is representative of another kind of ‘Hollow Man’.

Ø  Significance of the two epigraphs: two different types of `hollow/stuffed men´ are presented- he who lacks a soul (Mister Kurtz) and he who lacks a real body (Guy Fawkes dummy), representing both physical and spiritual emptiness.

Ø  1-4: The ‘hollow men’ and ‘stuffed men’, ‘filled with straw’ are a combination of the effigies burned on Guy Fawkes Day, the conspirators in Julius Caesar, and Kurtz.  More profoundly, they are Eliot’s modern man, an empty, corrupt breed.

Ø  “Headpiece filled with straw”- What does ‘straw’ signify/symbolize here?

A.    l. 4: Straw is the usual filling for the effigies burned on Guy Fawkes Day.  It is also a common building material for effigies used in harvest or fertility rituals, celebrating the symbolic death of a vegetation god as necessary for the rebirth and growth of the land.  One of these, observed by both Sir James Frazer and W. Warde Fowler, is the Roman ritual of the Argei.  This imagery suggests that a sacrifice of the ‘hollow men’ can redeem mankind and that after their destruction we can again flourish.

Ø  “Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless.” –
What is remarkable about his line?

A.    Their voices are not dry but dried, connoting that they’ve been dried by something or someone, but what or who? That’s something we still ignore. When the hollow men in their leaning –praying- whisper together, in group, their voices have no sense, they don’t even exist –another contradiction, can a voice be quiet?

Ø  In lines 8-10 the voices are compared with “wind in dry grass or rat’s feet over broken glass in our dry cellar”. In both cases, we could argue that wind `doesn’t affect´ dry grass –if it were humid, the wind would dry it anyway- and rat’s feet `aren`t affected´ by broken glass, because of their size. What’s more, a cellar –a basement- is supposed to possess humidity, but it is dry, like the grass and the voices. This comparison greatly accentuates the `meaninglessness´ of the voices, which is, by generalisation, applicable to the men as well.

Ø  “Shape without form, shade without colour,

   Paralysed force, gesture without motion;”-Allusion.

A.    The moral or spiritual condition of the hollow men corresponds to that of the souls described in the Inferno III. These are the souls of those who lived without blame and without praise; they never actively chose between good and evil, and therefore were never spiritually alive. They are mixed with those angels who were neither rebellious nor faithful to God at the time of Satan’s revolt, but were for themselves, and  are therefore rejected by both heaven and hell, so that even the wicked have some glory over them.

The lines also recall Marlow’s vision of nothingness when he fights against death, in contrast to Kurtz’s vision of ‘the horror’, which seems to Marlow to be an affirmation and a moral victory.

Ø  Those who have crossed/With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom…”- What does “death’s other Kingdom” signify?

A.    ll. 13-15: Those who have crossed to death’s other kingdom are those who have left behind a state of spiritual nothingness (or, alternatively, hell or purgatory) and entered into knowledge and recognition of that state ( or heaven).  They are the ones who are capable of looking directly at life and the universe and seeing the inner truth. Kurtz, though probably not heaven bound, had the same moment of realization just before his death, as seen in his stare and his final utterance, “The horror! The horror!”  The idea of crossing refers to a transition from one state to the other, such as when Dante the Pilgrim had to cross to rivers to be freed from sin and shame before his eyes could stand to look upon his beloved Beatrice in heaven.  This is a plea from the hollow men to those who have escaped their fate.  Like the numerous souls who beg Dante to keep their memory alive, they are asking for those lucky souls to remember the fate of those less fortunate, and to also remember that they were not seeking to do wrong, but simply lacked what the lucky ones have, morals and values.

Ø   “Remember us – if at all – not as lost”- Allusion.

l. 15: The song sung by children begging for pennies on Guy Fawkes Day begins “Please to remember / The fifth of November / Gunpowder, treason, and plot.”

Ø  “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams”- Whose ‘Eyes’ referred to here?

l. 19: Eliot alludes to Beatrice’s eyes as mentioned by Dante in “Purgatorio” (XXX).

ll. 19-22: Dante cannot meet Beatrice’s eyes when he first sees her because he still feels shame and suffers their reproof.  The eyes of the virtuous should shame the hollow men, but at the same time, those eyes contain within them a chance for redemption.  This is an opportunity Dante the pilgrim accepted, and Marlow refused.

ll. 20-22: In heaven, Dante no longer feels shamed by Beatrice’s gaze, but instead, marvels in her beauty, which continues to grow as they advance to the uppermost strata of heaven.  Once the invitation for redemption is accepted and virtue is restored, the formerly hollow man has no reason to feel shame when looking into the eyes of the virtuous.  “Death’s dream kingdom” is heaven; in order to have reached that paradise, even if by means of a guide, the soul must already have been purified.  He does not see the same shame causing eyes he saw originally, instead he sees a gaze that he can meet.

Ø  Some critics read the poem as told from three perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death’s kingdoms (“death’s dream kingdom”, “death’s twilight kingdom”, and “death’s other 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 image of eyes figures prominently in the poem.

Ø  The poet depicts figures “Gathered on this beach of the tumid river” – drawing considerable influence from Dante’s third and fourth cantos of the Inferno which describes Limbo, the first circle of Hell – showing man in his inability to cross into Hell itself or to even beg redemption, unable to speak with God.

Ø  Dancing “round the prickly pear,” the figures worship false gods, recalling children and reflecting Eliot’s interpretation of Western culture after World War I.

Ø  What does ‘whimper’ signify?

A.    The whimper is that Guy Fawkes exhaled when he gave up his co-conspirators; it is what Brutus and Cassius spoke when their plans to rule crumbled, it is Kurtz’s last utterance when he finally realizes the truth of the world he lives in, and it is the end for all hollow men.

A.    Native version of Mister

2.     What does term ‘hollow’ refer to here?

A.     Devoid of spirituality.

3.     Who narrates the poem?

A.    One of the “Hollow Men”

4.     How can the poem be best described?

A.    A Modernist poem

B.     A Symbolist poem

C.    A religious poem

D.    A Modern poem

5.     What is the most dominant literary technique/feature of the poem?

A.    Repetition

6.      Whom does “Hollow Men” in the title refer to?

A.    Modern man, an empty, corrupt breed.

B.     Characters from the Heart of Darkness

C.    People in Hell in Dante’s Inferno

D.    Effigies

7.       The Old Guy refers to

A.     Guy Fawkes, the plotter of the Gunpowder plot which attempted to blow the parliament of King James I on 5^th Nov 1605.

8.     The term ‘headpiece’ implies

A.     Head

B.     Head of the effigy

C.    Head of Kurtz

D.    Head of the ghosts in Inferno

9.      “We are the hollow men /We are the stuffed men/Leaning together” Why do they lean together?

A.     They are leaning together to support each other, as if they are frightened or cannot support themselves.

10.   “We whisper together/ Are quiet and meaningless” What does the poet allude to here?

A.    an instrument of fate in Heart of Darkness, symbolising also conspiracy

11.     Why does Eliot repeat the word ‘dry’?

A.    To convey that the Hollow Men are dry and do not have blood in the veins.

12.    “As wind in dry grass”

A.    The voices of the hollow men are compared to the wind running through dry grass, which sounds like a quiet rattling or scraping.

13.    “Or rats’ feet over broken glass” means

A.    The voices sound like the feet of rats pitter-pattering over pieces of broken glass

14.   The phrase ‘shape without form, shade without colour’ is an example

A.     Epigram

15.    The phrase ‘gesture without motion’ is an example of

A.     Epigram

16.   “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion” What are the allusions made here?

A.    Dante’s Inferno and Conrad’s HoD

17.    “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion” The shapes refer to?

A.    The shapes refer to the souls of the people, who never made a choice regarding their spiritual state during life and who remain in a condition of unfulfillment in Dante’s inferno. [refers to the condition of undecidedness of the modern men]

18.   “Remember us – if at all” alludes to

A.    The plea of the souls to Dante at Hell to keep a memory of them and also the song of the children on Guy Fawkes Day.

19.   In the poem ‘death’s other kingdom’ refers to

A.     A higher spiritual state [through inferno to heaven] where redemption can be possible.

B.     A world of lower vision

C.    Hell

D.    Heaven

20.  “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams” Whose eyes are alluded to here?

A.    Beatice’s [who tells Dante how she came to him first in dreams to lead him back to the part of virtue.  Just as Beatrice give Dante a chance for redemption by orchestrating his  journey, all men also have the chance for redemption.]

21.    The phrase ‘lost violent souls’ are

A.     Souls lost by the violence of their action.

22.   ‘Death’s dream kingdom’ refers to?

A.     The hollow valley which are peopled by the spiritually hollow men.

B.     Kingdom which is unreal.

C.    Kingdom possessed by death.

23.   “twilight kingdom” refers to

A.    The twilight that sets in is the choice the soul must face between light and darkness.

22.   Guy Fawkes Day falls on

A.     November 5

23.   “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.” The description resembles

A.     Dante’s description of the Earthly Paradise

B.     Dante’s description of Hell

C.    Dante’s description of Inferno

D.    Dante’s description of heaven

24.  “This is the dead land/This is cactus land” Here we have an echo of the poem

A.     The Waste land

25.   “Here the stone images/Are raised, here they receive”. The image suggests

A.      idolatrous worship [The worship of stones is a degradation of a higher form of worship]

26.  “This is cactus land” suggests

A.     A spiritually barren land

27.   “Under the twinkle of a fading star.” The fading star may suggest

A.      hope or salvation

28.  “Lips that would kiss” Here we have an inverted reference to Shakespeare’s

A.      Romeo and Juliet [Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.]

29.  “In this last of meeting places”

A.     Here the “meeting places” refers to all the four sources of the poem.

30.  “Gathered on this beach of the tumid river”. The “tumid river” alludes to

A.     Dante’s River Acheron flowing around hell and/or the river Marlow follows into the African ‘heart of darkness’.

31.    “The eyes reappear/As the perpetual star/Multifoliate rose” allude to

A.     The Pilgrim’s vision [in Paradiso xxx] of the highest level of heaven is of a rose whose petals are formed by Mary and the saints.

32.   The term ‘multifoliate’ means

A.     Having myriads of petals

B.     Having multi-foliage

C.    Having multi fertility

D.    Having multi flowers.

33.   “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.” Through Eliot suggests

A.    By performing an infertility dance at the moment of resurrection, we are in effect blocking and rejecting the salvation it can bring.

34.   What could be the significance of 5 o’clock?

A.    5:00 a.m. is the traditional time of Christ’s resurrection

35.   ‘Shadow’ refers to

A.     The embodiment of some fatal and ominous obstruction or Dark Angel.

36.  How does the world end?

A.     Not with a bang, but with a whimper which symbolizes failure.

37.   What does the ‘whimper’ refer to?

A.     The whimper is that Guy Fawkes exhaled when he gave up his co-conspirators; it is what Brutus and Cassius spoke when their plans to rule crumbled, it is Kurtz’s last utterance when he finally realizes the truth of the world he lives in, and it is the end for all hollow men.

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