A Biography on Society -- The Hollow Men

In his poem The Hollow Men, T.S Eliot narrates the views of the world from the eyes of a person who sees every other person as hollow. What does that mean? A hollow person is someone who has no emotion or personality? Despite this being an interesting hypothesis, I feel Eliot attempts to use the “Hollow” metaphor at a societal level. This could is supported by his title, The Hollow Men. Had Eliot referred to the individual he would have used “man” to state the feelings of a single person.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar (line 1)

This first stanza of the poem is very powerful. It talks about society as a meaningless and worthless voice, much like a mouse in a cellar. Eliot’s use of “we” made me feel part of the poem and gave me a starting point for reflection. Interestingly, many of the verses are contradictions between them and this greatly highlights the purpose of this stanza. In the first two verses, “hollow” and “stuffed” have opposite meanings, why would Eliot use them to describe the same theme? The first word that came to my mind after reading these verses was “hypocrisy”. Humans are almost by their very nature two-faced. We tend to show others different, often purposely created, personalities of ourselves. This is what allows humans to be “hollow” and “stuffed” at the same time. By speaking while being “stuffed” as a different person, our voices are dried of all their meaning.

“Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralysed force, gesture without motion (line 11); “Again, Eliot uses these contradictions to describe humans, we have a body with actual form but that doesn’t give us a true shape. Our many masks can make us change appearances easily.

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but onlyAs the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Next to the first stanza, this is another extremely powerful stanza for me. It talks about people who have died with “direct eyes”, perhaps not of old age but died unexpectedly? Soldiers killed by a bullet, a man killed by a car, all these I believe have met death with direct eyes. These people, Eliot believes, do not remember the violence of their deaths but the indifference given to them by society, by the hollow men. The stanza immediately reminded me of politics. It reminded me of politicians and businessmen who express their horror at death during war or hard times but in reality think about business and personal profits. Politicians, in my opinion, are the best example of hollow men. They are stuffed with words and empty thoughts but in reality they are hollow of many values.

The second section of the poem shows one of the masks of society’s hollow men:

In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone (line 46).

The fourth section speaks of how the hollow men become when hardship hits them. When others are going through dire times, hollow men lift false hope towards them, but when hollow men themselves get hit they expect everything.

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river (line 57),

As their last chance, hollow men come together and attempt to work together. Interestingly, they “avoid speech”, they avoid the poison that made their society indifferent to hardships so it will hopefully turn its eyes back on them. “Sightless, unless /The eyes reappear (line 61)… The hope only /Of empty men (line 66).”

The fifth and last section of the poem concludes and reflects on this hollow men society. “Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow (line 74).” Hollow men live in the limbo of moral. They straddle between taking actions and just speaking of them, as Eliot would put it, Hollow men are masters of the Shadow. Eliot finishes the poem with a great, yet very disturbing phrase: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper (line 99).” I usually picture the end of the human race as a war spectacle of biblical proportions, a terrible and gruesome sight, but fantastic in power. Eliot foreshadows that humans will end very differently, whimpering and begging for help. Which is true is left to be seen, but Eliot’s end gave me tingle down my spine.