By: T.S. Elliot The Hollow Men

Historical Background & T.S Elliot Brief bio. The Hollow Men appeared in 1925. For the critic Edmund Wilson, it marked "The nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in The Waste Land." It is Eliot's major poem of the late 1920s. Similar to other work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage. BIO. (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an American publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets." Born in the United States, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

Theme and Tone The main theme for this poem is that they are basically dead and empty with no soul. They are trapped in the desert on the bank of a river they can't get across. In fact, you would expect them to be even more ticked off than they are. They try not to say anything at all. When you don't have a proper soul, it's harder to get worked up about soul-crushing misery.

Figurative Language and Poetic Devices Their hollowness is a sign that they lack a soul and other essential qualities of being human. They are also dead, so they don't have complete bodies. dryness, broken things, heaven, eyes, the shadow, and allusions and more allusions.

Poem Interpretation The poem begins with two epigraphs: one is a quotation from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness remarking on the death of the doomed character Kurtz. The other is an expression used by English schoolchildren who want money to buy fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. On this holiday, people burn straw effigies of Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British Parliament back in the 17th century.

Conclusion The fifth and final section begins with a nursery rhyme modeled on the song "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush," except instead of a mulberry bush the kiddies are circling a prickly pear cactus. The speaker describes how a "shadow" has paralyzed all of their activities, so they are unable to act, create, respond, or even exist. He tries quoting expressions that begin "Life is very long" and "For Thine is the Kingdom," but these, too, break off into fragments. In the final lines, the "Mulberry Bush" song turns into a song about the end of the world. You might expect the world to end with a huge, bright explosion, but for the Hollow Men, the world ends with a sad and quiet "whimper

Works Cited http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/passivity-theme.html http://mural.uv.es/rubafa/hollowmen.htm http://www.google.com/