Before you start reading this blog, I recommed you watch this video on “The Hollow Men.”
“The Hollow Men” explores the search for the meaning of life without God and a loss of it along with hope in the world. Although the reader is led to believe that “The Hollow Men” represents meaningless lives, T.S. Eliot intends to make them think otherwise. Like in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the reality of experience is also examined in “The Hollow Men.”
According to J. Hillis Miller,”the empty men are bereft of God.” The “hollow men” are separated from their spirits and minds– they are nothing but “walking corpses” (Miller). What, then, would be the meaning of life for such people? The hollow men “are quiet and meaningless” in this unreal world. Eliot seems to establish that there is no meaning of life in this world without God. However, these “hollow men”– “stuffed men”– beg “Those who have crossed/ With direct eyes to death’s other Kingdom” to “remember us … not as lost/ violent souls.” These men are generally calling out to those whom are still alive to remember them as more than just lost/violent souls, for, then, they would be capable of damnation. If there’s hope for damnation, then there is hope for salvation. T.S. Eliot also writes of these hollow men being sightless, since “The eyes are not here/ There are no eyes here.” Miller explains that “though Eliot’s language is deliberately ambiguous, it implies that the sightless eyes of the hollow men may see again.” Therefore, Eliot implies that even in a world where men are hollow and life seems to be useless, a glimpse of hope still lingers.
Again, the reality of experience is questioned in this poem by T.S. Eliot. “This is the dead land” where “shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion” exists. How can shape be without form and shade be without color? This setting ultimately supports the idea that a nonexistent world is in place. In general, the reality of experience is minimal and T.S. Eliot uses this fantasized setting to point out that, even in cases like these, hope still exists.
I didn’t quite grasp the concept of the Hollow Men but seeing how you analyzed it really pulls everything together for me. It’s so interesting to refer to the time period in which Eliot wrote this story, and consider the views and expectations of the average person. His thoughts reflect something different, though; a person doesn’t need God to live a fulfilling life.
The Hollow Men left me with many deep thoughts. It has left me with the conclusion that its talking about life with out god, and that you have realised but my other thought was that maybe it’s about heaven and earth, or evil and good.There is this explanation of these two kingdoms mentioned in the poem. When the so called “Hollow Men ” Are unable to pass threw the gates into heaven or hell they are left there to be nothing. To have no chosen side in life but to be hollow.
I like the connections you made, and your analysis really helped me understand “The Hollow Men” better. These people really were “walking corpses”, and they have no spiritual substance. Elliot seems to write poems with crazy underlying meanings so that dissection is a terrible process. Anyway, good job Meme.
Haha meme, you actually helped me understand Hollow men. I can’t say I’m the biggest T.S. fan, but you defiantly helped me pull hollow men together.