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T. S. EliotA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“The Hollow Men” is a modernist, free verse poem by American-English poet T.S. Eliot. Originally published in 1925, this poem is believed to have been inspired by Eliot’s experiences in war-ravaged Europe during World War I (1914-1918) and its aftermath on European culture. The poem is divided into five cantos and uses literary and religious allusions to convey themes of emptiness, self-erosion, redemption, and cultural decay. The poem’s fragmentary and unmetered form contribute to these themes and reflect the broader modernist literary movement of the early 20th century.
In the tradition of literary voyages through the underworld and dark unknown places, the poem follows a nameless man among “Hollow Men” who exist in a dystopian world of the spiritually dead. The men are lost and broken souls on a desolate landscape, partially seeking salvation but paralyzed by shame and disillusionment. Like its predecessor “The Waste Land” (1922), Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” was very widely read, deeply impacting Anglo-American literary culture, and it is known especially for its now famous last four lines.
Poet Biography
Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born poet, literary critic, and dramatist. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888, but moved to England at the age of 25. There he would live out the rest of his days, eventually obtaining British citizenship and renouncing his American one. His most famous works include his narrative poem “The Waste Land,” and his poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939), which was adapted into the Broadway stage musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1981.
Eliot faced challenges in childhood because he suffered from an internal physical disability, which meant he could not participate in some of the more active social events. Instead he turned to literature, including adventure stories like those by Mark Twain. He studied briefly at the Sorbonne in Paris before settling in England, where he married his first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Both suffered from addiction and mental illness, and the marriage eventually disintegrated. He later married his much younger secretary, Esmé Valerie Fletcher. He also maintained a complex, lifelong romantic friendship with a woman named Emily Hale. In 2020, records of their correspondence were released to the public.
Eliot began publishing his first poems in 1905. He released his first full-length collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917; however, the majority of his work was published individually. Over his long career, he had a relatively small body of work. His poetic style draws heavily from the work of Dante Alighieri, the Romantic poets, and his contemporary Ezra Pound. He also became known for his plays, including The Cocktail Party (1949), which won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. In 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In addition to his personal writing, Eliot spent much of his career in publishing. He worked for Faber and Faber, where he helped launch the careers of numerous poets including W. H. Auden and Ted Hughes. He died of lung illness in his home in London in 1965. In 1983, he was honored with a posthumous Tony award for Cats.
Poem Text
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece 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
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
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.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
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.
IV
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
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
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.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
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.
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” All Poetry, 1925.
Summary
In Canto I, the speaker is part of a collective of dead “hollow men” (Line 1), or scarecrow-like figures who cannot find the energy to speak or move. When they do share ideas, their words are empty and directionless. Others who have made their way to heaven barely remember them, and then only as these hollow figures. In Canto II, the speaker encounters eyes in his dreams, but avoids looking at them. In heaven, there are other eyes, and growth, and song. These things seem like they are a galaxy away. The speaker is afraid of going to heaven and disguises himself as a scarecrow to avoid detection.
In Canto III, the hollow men are in a barren landscape with only cacti growing. There are stone effigies to which the dead men bow down. The speaker wonders if heaven is as empty as this place, where the hollow men are aching for love but instead use their lips to pray to the statues. In Canto IV, the speaker states there are no eyes in this empty land, which was once a piece of heaven. The men quietly gather together on a riverbank for solace, and the speaker acknowledges that their only hope is to be accepted into heaven.
In Canto V, the hollow men dance together around a cactus to keep themselves occupied. They are caught in a place of status between ideas and conceptions, feelings and reactions, desires and fulfilments. They try to voice the Lord’s Prayer, but they are unable to complete it. Instead, they gather together and wait for the end of the world.
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