The Hollow Men

him say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my --’ Everything belonged to him” (55). Kurtz thinks everything is his, which is an unbounded greed, but explains how he collected so much ivory. However, he is hollow. Greed is the guiding force for Kurtz, even above relationships with others. His harlequin, who nurses him back to health twice, is met with greed as the harlequin says, “...he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of…

salvation. He expresses the fragmentation of his world from the physical and emotional scars of World War I driving in civilisation, imperialism and industrialisation. In his poem, ‘The Hollow Men’ is neatly constructed of various allusions that effectively create messages of society’s meaninglessness. In ‘The Hollow Men’, Eliot uses literary forms and techniques to form the loss of tradition and the aftermath fragmentation of his world. Eliot makes use of allusion at the epigraph “Mistah…

Inspired by a combination of nationalistic fervor and glorified expectations of a short war, thousands of soldiers from multiple countries enlisted to fight in the devastating conflict known as World War I. These men were quickly met with disillusionment when they discovered the truly nightmarish conditions of this war characterized by attrition. Much of the war’s combat took place in trenches where soldiers fought in filth and watched helplessly as comrades were massacred by bombshells, machine…

In his poem We Wear the Mask, Laurence Dunbar speaks rather elusively on the topic of human deceit. More specifically, the underlying message of the human tendency to hide emotions in suffering, reveals itself in the 15 line poem. Explored in the first two lines of the poem, Dunbar speaks about a figurative mask; a mask covering the face, hiding cheeks and eyes, with the mask taking over with its fake happiness, all a subdued lie. Continuing through the poem, the second stanza expresses grief…

T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men,” reveals the loss of faith in God by veterans after enduring WWI. Eliot suggests that the modern loss of religion creates a desolate and faithless society. Following WWI, the veterans that returned home were faced with the reality that dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which translates to “it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country” was not their truth. After witnessing the horrors that took place in the war, the veterans realized that falling…

Poem Summary The poem “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot talks about the struggles of the men/women in a special world. These people are called hollow men and ultimately represent many of the people in the real world. Eliot is trying to show the similarities of the hollow men to the people in the real world by saying they are lacking certain things such as happiness, love, and hope. The first section of the poem talks about the “hollow men” in this world. The hollow men have a “headpiece filled…

Our World Today (An analysis of Hollow Men…) “Consisting in the theme, implicit throughout the latter, of debasement through the rejection of good, of despair through consequent guilt” (Smith). The poem Hollow Men was written by T. S. Eliot. In this poem, there are many life lessons that can be extracted and applied to our lives. Through this poem, it is easy to realize what can be learned as we experience this life. Because of this, it is easier to rely on the poem to create a new way to live…

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…

Conrad’s niggers are, in their feeble and shadowy existential realities, alluded to in The Hollow Men. In a sense, black activities and intellectuals from the Harlem ghetto resemble them. They are human beings full of hunger, disease and fear which situate their condition not in ancient Africa or Europe but America as limbo itself. Having experienced acculturation or alienation, the black ex-slaves become neither African nor European in outlook. Their sad king or leader named Doris (“I” in this…

they also go together. This literature book has many cool stories and poems but there only a couple that have actually stuck with me. Three titles that I enjoyed and wouldn't mind reading again would have to be When I fear that I may cease, The Hollow Men and Porphyria’s Lover The poem When I Fear that I May Cease to Be makes me wonder what will happen once i'm gone. “Then on the shore of the wild world I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink.” (Pg 885). This poem he…