T Eliot The Poem
T Eliot The Poem
T Eliot The Poem
An Essay on Poetry
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II
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III
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IV
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Of empty men.
V
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Part I: "We are the hollow men- We are the stuffed men" : We are seemingly stuffed but
in the depth of our souls we are empty. The hollow men are Eliot's modern, empty
corrupted man. "Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw": We are like Guy Fawkes
effigy; our heads are filled with despair, delusions but empty at the core. The hollow men
are like walking corpses whose minds are empty and detached from reality and life. They
are alive but they are also experiencing death at the same time.
Part II: "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams in death's dream kingdom": In those lines the
speaker fears facing the death the eyes of death even in his dreams. We, hollow men,
can only encounter with the eyes' symbols like "sunlight on a broken column" which
gives broken light "a tree" and "voices in the wind". All of these are perceived indirectly.
To reach the direct eyes are more distant and more solemn than the fading star which
represents remoteness from reality, especially spiritual reality. In short, he fears the
meet with direct vision of death. "Let me be no nearer in death's dream kingdom": The
speaker doesn't want to come any closer to death kingdom in other words he doesn't
want to be near to death.
Part III: In this part there is a representation the world hollow men live in. The narrator
defines his world as waste land like desert which symbolize emptiness where "there is
dead land, cactus land / Here the stone images" .Stone (lifeless) images of spiritual is
meant here.
Part IV: " The eyes are not here/ There are no eyes here" In this part the narrator
become progressively indifferent to the eyes of dead in contrast to previous lines of the
poem. The fading star in previous stanzas becomes "dying star". The darkness increases
as the shadow of the death in the hollow valley of death emerges.
Mirvete Hyseni