The Hollow Men Themes

Register to read the introduction… As twilight is halfway in between day and night, purgatory is halfway in between heaven and hell. In this system, the place in which a person remains in the afterlife is in direct accordance to their sins and virtues; various sins cascade deeper down into hell and virtues escalate further into heaven. So what, then, of purgatory? Perhaps this is where “hollow men” fall, since they have neither transgressed nor done any good. Unfortunately for the men in the poem, their destination seems to be on a more portentous level. The final lines of part three describe the men as “Gathered on the beach of the tumid river,” which is the river one must cross to enter hell. Although one wonders what have these men done to deserve such a fate? The end of the poem finally reveals the …show more content…
It is stated that “Between the idea/And the reality/Between the motion/And the act/Falls the Shadow.” Here, the central theme and meaning of the poem finally come to the surface as one. After the notion of the action and before its execution falls the “Shadow.” In the case of the men, between their “meaningless whispers” to act and the act itself, came their demise. The “Shadow” is the condemning sin. Whether or not the deed is ever done is simply trivial. The mere perpetuation of the idea is a transgression in itself, and any action is merely a footnote. This is the mistake of the men, and will now spend eternity in hell as a result.
     In the poem “The Hollow Men”, although not having literally done anything, the scheming intent of the men is aberrant enough. This discrepancy, or lack thereof, between the proposition and the motion, is the poem’s central theme and is ultimately what condemns a seemingly faultless group of men to