|
READ THIS
The poet surveys life in the modern, industrialised cities and concludes that it is empty and hollow. There
is no substance to our lives. We produce nothing that is worthwhile. Our world is shallow and sterile.
Eliot makes great use of the image of the afterlife to underline this point, adapting Dante's Divine
Comedy which speaks of the triple afterlife of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.
Although we have not done enough to deserve Hell, the poet argues, we also do not deserve Heaven.
Our future is therefore the dark and sterile life in Purgatory, where there will be no joy.
A NOTE ON THE POET
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He attended Harvard University and
graduated with a Masters degree in Philosophy. While there, he published several poems in the
Harvard Advocate.
The poet left the United States in 1910, moving first to France, then to Germany and finally London. He
married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915, which caused him to settle permanently in England.
His marriage was never successful, however, and they separated in 1933. In 1956 he would remarry, this
time to Valerie Fletcher.
Early during his stay in London, Eliot fell under the influence of the great American poet Ezra Pound, who
assisted in the publication of his early poetry.
The publication of his first book of poetry - Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917 - revealed
Eliot as a forerunner of Modernism, the philosophy of Modern Art. His next book - The Waste
Land, 1922 - is claimed by many to contain some of the most important poetry of the 20th century.
Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He died in London in 1965. He was 77 years
of age.
"The Hollow Men" is a complicated poem, drawing on other works of literature, especially Dante's
Divine Comedy and Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
The title "The Hollow Men" probably comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:
"But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests and like deceitful jades
Sink in the trial."
This roughly translates as: "Hollow or empty men are like horses, eager at the start of a race, but as
soon as they feel the pain of the spur, they lose heart and fail."
Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
|
TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:
"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms."
- To what eyes is the poet referring when he says that "The eyes are not here . . . There are no eyes
here."? (4)
[Need help?]
This is probably another reference to the "direct eyes" of those people who have energy,
enthusiasm and insight. These people, the poet says, no longer appear to exist in this industrial world
where the "hollow men" live.
|
- What is the "valley of dying stars . . . this hollow valley"? (4)
[Need help?]
This is probably once again a reference to the world in which we "hollow men" live, a sterile world
where even the stars are dying and the valleys themselves are "hollow".
Stars are synonymous with dreams and good fortune.
|
- Can you speculate on the significance of the "broken jaw"? (4)
[Need help?]
This is probably a reference to two things.
One appears to be a tradition amongst certain African tribes that the spirit of the dead clings to the
jawbone. A broken jawbone would therefore be an indication that everything is falling to pieces and that
the spirit of the dead is lost.
One is also reminded of the biblical incident where the prophet Sampson used the jawbone of an ass to
kill thousands of Philistine soldiers.
|
"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."
- These lines form a reworking of an old children's nursery rhyme. Can you remember what the original
words are? (2)
[Need help?]
"Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.
Here we go round the mulberry bush
On a cold and frosty morning."
|
- Why does the poet replace "mulberry bush" with "prickly pear"? (4)
[Need help?]
The mulberry bush is a symbol of fertility. It is lush and green, and bears an abundance of fruit. It is
thought that dancing around the mulberry bush was once a fertility dance.
The prickly pear, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. The prickly pear is a desert cactus, growing
in a totally sterile and infertile setting. Dancing around the prickly pear would therefore be an infertility
dance.
|
- Would you by any chance know the significance of "At five o'clock in the
morning"? (2)
[Need help?]
"Five o'clock in the morning" was the traditional time at which Jesus Christ was supposed to have
resurrected from the dead.
Doing an infertility dance around a cactus bush at the precise moment that Jesus rose from the dead
would, therefore, be the ultimate of lost hope.
|
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow."
- Speculate on the meaning of these words. (4)
[Need help?]
The poet is in fact using the thoughts of two ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato.
Aristotle spoke of ideas being the foundation for what makes reality come into being.
Plato, on the other hand, speaks of motion descending from the real world of ideas into our world of
shadows. (Plato claimed that we live in a shadow world where we can only see the shadows of reality but
can never know reality.)
These two ideas are then repeated in the following stanzas.
|
"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."
- We are looking again at a children's nursery rhyme. What were the original words? (2)
[Need help?]
"This is the way we clap our hands,
Clap our hands, clap our hands.
This is the way we clap our hands,
So early in the morning."
|
- What is the significance of the poet's conclusion that the world will end "not with a bang but a
whimper"? (4)
[Need help?]
According to the poet, the world should be a place of excitement, of intelligent reasoning, where one uses
one's brains, one's intellect and one's skills. In such a world, we will go out with a bang, with excitement.
In the world of "hollow men", on the other hand, there is only emptiness, where the world will end
with a whimper.
|
|
