Impression on The Hollow Menscholars

Outline
Background:T. S. Eliot was one of the greatest poets of the last century. His works have influenced poets, criticists and scholars of a whole generation.  In the poem The Hollow Men, Eliot satirized the straw men, which could be regarded as a comment on the moral and spiritual emptiness of society at that time. 
What the hollow men are like:The hollow men are those who are empty in spirit, lack of motivation, pursuit, and faith. They have to lean together to stand still.  The focus of their life is gone; the backbone of their spirit is destroyed.  They are alive with flesh and blood physically but dead without motivation and pursuit spiritually.
What their life are like:In death’s kingdom, even the violent souls will be judged, yet the hollow men dare not face it.  They can only live in the dead land.What they possess are mere
ly dying bodies; what they can do is only praying to the broken stone and trembling with tenderness at the same time.They had no idea what their future would be, and what kind of fate they would have.  For them, life is torture, so that life is very long.
How their world ends: No one will care for their death; they will die unnoticed in the end.Even at the last moment of their life, they do not find their dignity, gone with a weak whimper.
Reflection:There are countless hollow men even in modern society.  Modern citizens who are oppressed by heavy work or suffocating life style.Driven by the pressure of life, people’s passion, wisdom, peaceful mood and profound thinking are squeezed out in their mind.  They are modern hollow men.  We should try to listen to the sound from our heart, from deep inside.Feel our heart, surpass the profane world, embrace our spirits and return to the pure era.
Key words: The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot, Spirit

Table of Contents
Declaration    I
Outline    II
Part I    1
1.1    Background    1
Part II    2
2.1    Analysis of the poem    2
2.1.1    What the hollow men are like    2
2.1.2    What their lives are like    2
2.1.3    How their world ends    3
Part III    4
3.1    Reflection on modern society    4
Acknowledgement    5
References    6

Part I
1.1 Background
T. S. Eliot was one of the greatest poets of the last century.  He described himself as “a royalist in politics, a classicist in literature, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion”; and he had manifested a reliance upon authority and tradition.  His masterpiece, The Waste Land, is one of the major works of modern literature.  Its subject, the apparent failure of Western civilization which World War I seemed to demonstrate, set the tone of his poetry until 1930.  His works have influenced poets, criticists and scholars of a whole generation.
    The Hollow Men, the poem this paper is going to illustrate, was written in 1925, a few years after World War I.  In this poem, Eliot satirized the straw men, which could be regarded as a comment on the moral and spiritual emptiness of society at that time.  People were extremely desperate because of the disillusionment of their dreams after World War I.  As its name implied, The Hollow Men represented the empty inner world of those who were devoid of faith and spirituality.

Part II
2.1 Analysis of the poem
2.1.1 What the hollow men are like
“MistachKrutz—he dead. / A penny for the Old Guy”, the two epigraphs gives two typical examples of the hollow men directly at the beginning of the poem.  MistachKrutz was a domineering imperialist who tried to control everything through spirit and finally died misera
bly, with his soul lost.  Old Guy tried to blow up the British Parliament with gunpowder in 1605, and was burned up on Nov. 5th every year in the form of a stuffed effigy by children who went around begging for pennies to buy fireworks.  Krutz was hollow because he lost his soul at last, while the Old Guy is literally hollow in stuffed effigy, losing the ability of thinking and acting.
The first section of the poem further illustrates what the hollow men are like: “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw”.  With a few sentences, Eliot vividly shows us that the hollow men are not really hollow in physical form.  They are hollow in spirit.  In that sense, they are alive with flesh and blood physically but dead without motivation and pursuit spiritually.  It reminds me of the scarecrows that the farmers used to frighten the birds.  Or they even may be more deplorable than the scarecrows which at least can stand by themselves performing agricultural functions.  The hollow men, they have to lean together to stand still.  The focus of their life is gone; the backbone of their spirit is destroyed. 
“Our dried voices……Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass / Or rats' feet over broken glass / In our dry cellar”.  Without spirit, the voices of the hollow men are dried; what they say are meaningless, for no one would think them important.  They are just like aimless rangers, wandering together on a deserted land.  No one would listen to their whisper, or those who hear it would choose to neglect it.  For those who have motivation and pursuit, and whose souls are not lost, the grass in their garden is green and vibrant, the glass they hold is full of fragrant wine.  On the contrary, the hollow men can only enjoy dry grass and broken glass.  “Shape without form / shade without colour / Paralysed force / gesture without motion”.  These lines reflect that what the hollow have are just empty shells.  With only physical body but not spirit, they are utterly worthless persons.  We can declare that they are not living in this world but just existing in the world.

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