T. S. Elliot's The Hollow Men

Improved Essays
“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” The famous final line of T.S. Elliots poem, The Hollow Men. For a long time, the end of the world has been on the mind millions. With many possible variations of the apocalypse, ranging from zombies, nuclear fallout, robot takeover, alien invasion, and natural disasters, it’s hard for the topic to not cross the mind at least once. But how has the media affected the general population's perception of the end? Some claim that the media is brainwashing our youth, but the truth is that while media can alter the way they think, there are many more factors that come into play when determining whether televisions, video games, novels and propaganda, are really the culprit causing the …show more content…
He asked congress to allocate $100 Million in order to fund and construct fallout shelters and nuclear alarm systems (USH). They were built all over the country in every major city like New York, the signs for the shelters can even be seen if they’ve not yet been stolen. Many shelters have been around for a long time but have only recently been discovered, one being the famous Brooklyn Bridge. Finally found in 2006 during a routine inspection (Chan). During the Cold War, the shelters were actually encouraged, despite the fact that most of the shelters available for installation would not be able to withstand a nuclear blast, let alone keep anyone alive long enough till it is safe to leave. Many of the shelters are buried at least three feet under ground, and depending on the amount of people packed into the canister, the earth itself already acts as an insulator for heat. There’s a reason many old industrial buildings, such as the Crown Point Hotel/Train Station in downtown Indianapolis, have vents going underground for geothermal heat. The temperature inside of the shelter would gradually rise from body heat and would not be able to cool down without proper ventilation. This would most likely cause heat exhaustion within any shelters that survived. Though a neat concept condoned by the Kennedy Administration, they are not very plausible unless able to support many people for several months without a problem. The reason that these shelters are significant is because the widespread fear of nuclear warfare was so widespread that people were actually spending hundreds of dollars to install these systems into their homes and backyards, with no real proof of

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    “We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out” (Ray Bradbury). By beautiful stuff I mean the thoughts that swirl in your head or questions that leads you to your lightbulb moment. You are undoubtedly thinking about what I am saying to you right this moment, but just envision living in a world that eradicated any thinking and muted your expressions from ever being perceived. Ray Bradbury predicted a society resembling this in his book Fahrenheit 451 published 1953, an isolated society where books are made illegal by a government fearing an independent-thinking public.…

    • 1690 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Media Autobiography Essay

    • 1474 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Media Autobiography: Chelsea Guy It is easy to take for granted the level of influence that media has on your life as it becomes engrossed in your daily activities. Sometimes we may not even realize how the media contributes to the way we speak, dress, act, and interact with others. Mass media refers to any means of communication that reach relatively large sums of people. Some examples of Mass media include television, movies, music, internet, books, newspapers, and social networks.…

    • 1474 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Pop Culture Scare The media and pop culture have influenced society in more ways than we know. Everything that society does, thinks, feels, or believes, comes from social media or a standard of pop culture. For example, the “YOLO”, “haters gonna hate”, or any other of the ridiculous basic sayings portrayed by the media or news, are slowly consuming young people’s minds and actions. The worldly things in the media are influencing young people negatively by inequality between the sexes, loss of creativity and originality, and decreases trust in the media world.…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nearly one million people were affected by Olsen Welles’ broadcast of the War of the Worlds (Bryant, Jennings, et al.). The War of the Worlds broadcast constitutes the hypodermic needle approach given that during or immediately after the broadcast massive amounts of people were prompted to take action. The broadcast “injected” fear directly into the minds of the public creating a massive media effect seen within the streets of America. The fact that people attempted suicides, had heart attacks, and an exodus of residents was reported shows the stranglehold the media held on the passive public.…

    • 389 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gross And Gilles Argument

    • 930 Words
    • 4 Pages

    America and the End of the World- Evaluation of Gross and Gilles’ Argument With today’s technological advancements, it has been made possible for the media to be a primary source for many Americans to receive information about current events happening in society, with a source that may be found trustworthy. The article, “How Apocalyptic Thinking Prevents Us from Taking Political Action,” by authors Matthew Barrett Gross and Mel Gilles, focuses on the predicament that the media is taking advantage of their influential role in society for views that are blinding Americans from serious issues by over exaggerating and instilling fear into the people. Although Gross and Gilles’ argument is valid that the media is using apocalyptic manipulation…

    • 930 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article, The Hollow, focused on many topics that are affecting society today. They include; Gentrification, the effects of the media and technology on society, education, and gay rights. Chris Offutt focused on how it changed the town of Appalachia. He described the changes he began to see as he returned to his home land. What was once a small town that mined clay, was now turning to a town where train stations, tennis courts, and public gardens could be seen.…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to Sutter Health (2013), “People all over the world use the media everyday.” The media influences all ages, especially teenagers. Media can be referred as sneaky and manipulative. In a study done by the National Institute on Media and the Family (2002), Fifty-three percent of females at the age of thirteen were not satisfied with their bodies; by the age of seventeen this will rise to seventy-eight percent. There are three ways the media has influences young characters in Ender’s Game: they lure them to Battle School, they place ideas in their head about their enemies, and they influence the flow of the war.…

    • 349 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Neil Postman’s 1985 novel “Amusing Ourselves to Death” presents many interesting and well-thought out claims, one of the major ones being about television and the dangers it presents to society. His main points on this subject pertaining to the fact …”that television has reduced our ability to take the world seriously.” By this, Postman is addressing the fact that all the information we receive now is through the television. Leading into one of his largest, and debatably most important, assertions, our society is morphing into something similar to Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World”. Where the people are controlled by entertainment and pleasure.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tone Of The Hollow Men

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Thomas Stearns Eliot (T.S. Eliot) wrote the The Hollow Men which revolves around the idea of how war affects and devastates society. The overall tone of this poem is grim and foreboding. The theme of The Hollow Men expressed through imagery, similes, allusions, and metaphors is that war ruins men and society. Historically The Hollow Men was written in response to World War I and its effects on society. Thomas Stearns Eliot was a Harvard graduate and an extremely prolific writer for his time.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the short story “Soldier's Home”, and the poem “The Hollow Men”, Hemingway and Eliot’s use of a gloomy tone conveys how when soldiers return from war, they often feel detached from the people around them. After Krebs gets home from battle, he will occasionally run into another person who fought also. In this situation Krebs gets back the feeling of being “sickeningly frightened all the time” and falls into the pose of a soldier. Using such dark and gloomy words, Hemingway demonstrates how after witnessing the horrors of combat, Krebs no longer feels like he can be himself around other people anymore, which causes him to become detached from everyone else around him. As the narrator of “The Hollow Men” talks about the life and…

    • 275 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Examples Of Fear Mongering

    • 1456 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Once something hits the media, it spreads like wildfire. All it takes is one source to report on a topic, or just report something in general before that little piece of information goes worldwide. One little click makes the news spread faster and farther. There are many techniques that can be used in the media to create buzz and attention, but one of the most common techniques is fear mongering. Fear mongering is defined by Merriam Webster as “The action of deliberately arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue.”…

    • 1456 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Because World War I decimated not only a continent but also a generation, T.S. Eliot observes the consequences of such horrors on the men of his generation. He implies in “The Hollow Men” that the survivors, the ones who come home, are the ones who lose salvation and become trapped in a living purgatory due to a loss of faith. Initially, Eliot establishes the “hollow men” as weakened men without sustenance. Their lives are void of any significance, and they are “Leaning together /…

    • 807 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The reader can relate to this cat’s name because, in general, people have an identity they keep themselves and a side they don’t want others to see. Therefore one can agree on Eliot’s representation of these multiple personalities because one holds different personalities that rely on where they are and who they are with. The poem, “The Hollow Men” uses many different examples of symbolism. Eliot speaks of “death's other kingdom” (line 16) and “death's dream kingdom” (line 32).…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The media is present around us everywhere we go, may it be in newspapers, advertisements, social networking or magazines. Our mind ingests and registers these images without us having a say in it. Whether we want or not to view these images our subconscious uses them to build our social behavior. Not only do these bias images invade our minds but they also shape the way in which we see the world. Media plays a meaningful role in entertaining, informing, and introducing values to diverse audiences in society.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is simply naïve to disregard the overwhelming influence that the media and literature has had over the public over the past century and more precisely, in our youth. As a society, we constantly twist ourselves to fit the mold presented to us through various media outlets (e.g. TV, movies, magazines, advertisements, etc.) and in literature we encounter in our lives for a multitude of reasons. Throughout time, men have been presented to fit very traditionally masculine traits based on a preconceived narrative as to what it means to be a man and how to present oneself in order to be perceived as manly by others. Media and literature have branded a hyper-masculine image of men that has in time become what is expected for young boys to follow––be it relayed to them or not.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays