Hollow Men Religion Essay

556 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Theme of eliot in the hollow men

As glimpses of a hopeful relationship between man and God stay persistent through World War I, T.S. Eliot reveals that the hollow men are inevitably ruined of hope and religion due to the men’s incredulous and post apocalyptic view of the world after the war. It is clear that Eliot incorporates paradox to extend the shallow viewpoints of the hollow men throughout their journey in limbo. It is here that Eliot suggests that a “Headpiece filled with straw” is a feeble symbol of a crown and it is antithetical because straw is light and frail and holds no absolute power (6). In reality, the headpiece is worth just as much as the hollow men: nothing. When the speaker considers “Shape without form, shade without color… gesture without motion” he develops a sense of doubt between man and God (13-14). The hollow men of post WWI consider religion to be an erroneous action between man and God because God has abandoned the soldiers, or the hollow men. …show more content…

Clearly, the “Sunlight on a broken column” imitates the hope of heathen men hungry for a relationship with God while also realizing that hope will be hard to muster after so many failed attempts of being religious (25). In this sense, the “broken column” implies that the hollow men yearn for a forged relationship with God due to the devastations that they have seen throughout WWI. Through the imagery of the broken column, Eliot proves that the men are doomed of having any sense of religion. Commonly, the “broken jaw” symbolizes the inability to communicate with God in his “lost kingdoms” due to the failed connection between man and God (58). Because of the tempestuous relationship that man and God share, the hollow men are confused about how much help religion can provide through a time of

Show More
Related

  • The Life of Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade

    2034 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marked by two world wars and the anxiety that accompanies humanity's knowledge of the ability to destroy itself, the Twentieth Century has produced literature that attempts to depict the plight of the modern man living in a modern waste land. If this sounds dismal and bleak, it is. And that is precisely why the dark humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. shines through our post-modern age. The devastating bombing of Dresden, Germany at the close of World War II is the subject of Vonnegut's most highly acclaimed work, Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. Vonnegut's experience as an American POW in Dresden fuels the narrative that unconventionally defines his generation through the life and death of Billy Pilgrim. The survival of Billy Pilgrim at Dresden and his re-entry to the shell-shocked world reveal a modern day journey of the anti-hero. Vonnegut's unusual style and black satire provide a refreshing backdrop for a vehement anti-war theme and enhance his adept ability to depict the face of humanity complete with all of its beauty and blemishes. Likewise, Vonnegut adds his own philosophy concerning time, our place in it, and connection (or disconnection) to it and one other. Perhaps the most crucial step in understanding this intriguing work is to start with its title, which holds the key to Vonnegut's most prevailing theme.

    Read More

  • Archetypes In The Hollow Men

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    Greed, lust, envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, pride. The cardinal sins are feared by some and recognized by all; despite this, there is one transgression that casts a silent shadow upon all of these offenses. As shown in T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”, the internal void of humanity not only destroys man, but begins the downfall of those whom he influences. The character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is portrayed in T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” through the use of an anti-hero archetype and allusions to “Death’s other Kingdom”, which is representative of the his detachment, caused by his revert to a primitive state -- acting only on his quintessential needs. Eliot’s usage of an anti-hero archetype and allusions also prove Conrad’s theme: indifference is the

    Read More

  • Religion Ethnography Essay

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    1.) Intro: I decided to focus my Religious Ethnography on a friend whom I recently have become close with. Adhita Sahai is my friend’s name, which she later told me her first name meant “scholar.” I choose to observe and interview Adhita, after she invited me to her home after hearing about my assignment. I was very humbled that she was open to this, because not only was it a great opportunity for this paper, but it also helped me get to know Adhita better. I took a rather general approach to the religious questions that I proposed to the Sahai family because I didn’t want to push to deep, I could tell Hinduism is extremely important to this family. Because this family does not attend a religious site where they worship, I instead listened to how they do this at home as a family instead.

    Read More

  • The Hollow Men

    1273 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri of New England descent, on Sept. 26, 1888.  He entered Harvard University in 1906, completed his courses in three years and earned a master's degree the next year.  After a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, he returned to Harvard.  Further study led him to Merton College, Oxford, and he decided to stay in England. He worked first as a teacher and then in Lloyd's Bank until 1925.  Then he joined the London publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer, becoming director when the firm became Faber and Faber in 1929.  Eliot won the Nobel prize for literature in 1948 and other major literary awards.

    Read More

  • Irony, Symbolism, and Imagery Reveal the Emptiness of War in One Hundred Years of Solitude

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    Irony, Symbolism, and Imagery Reveal the Emptiness of War in One Hundred Years of Solitude

    Read More

  • the wasteland

    728 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is clear that Eliot thought much of life was going nowhere, with people, like water, moving but never reaching a true destination or conclusion: ‘A crowd flowed over London Bridge’ and he links this image in a dream-like way to Dante’s reaction to the dead in limbo:

    Read More

  • The Hollow Men

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    At a point in all mortal’s existence, there will be a moment when their soul is between two states of being, waiting to be judged. Without the fearlessness and faith to move on to the afterlife, they will spend eternity stuck in purgatory. When T. S. Eliot wrote “The Hollow Men,” he used symbolism, imagery, and repetition to share his insight to address the lack of courage and faith that plagues every human being.

    Read More

  • The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Imagery, Literary Allusion, Structure

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    No one can ever have courage without fear because then courage would not require so much heart and strength to muster. Even though Alfred possessed a certain fear, he did not have enough heart to be courageous and take a step bigger than those “measured in coffee spoons.” Therefore, with the use of, imagery, literary allusion, and structure, Eliot was able to create a poem that criticized the modern man that affected his heart. Just think--why men said to themselves--that they finally had a noble and courageous cause to fight for when The Great War began only a few years after this poem was published.

    Read More

  • Eliot's Themes of Death and Futility in the Poem Remind Your Self of The Hollow Men

    407 Words  | 1 Pages

    suggests that heaven is not real. Another way Eliot makes us think. life is futile is that we feel nothing for the hollow men, they are. emotionally detached from us and we don't care about them or their lives and this suggests that one in the distant future will even know of our existence as many of us make no impression on the world.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast A Soldier's Home By Ernest Hemingway

    192 Words  | 1 Pages

    Between the two authors, Hemingway and Eliot, a similar idea shows through their writing, connecting them. They both use the common aspect of negative tone to reflect how after being in a war, the purpose that used to drive one’s life grows pointless and irrelevant. In the text of “A Soldier’s Home,” Krebs tells his mother “I don’t love anybody,”(Hemingway) which shows the audience the bitterness which he has attained. One may assume this aggravation comes from war due to Kreb’s mother’s surprise at finding this new attribute. Like “Soldier's Home”, “The Hollow Men” by TS Eliot has an indignant tone that shows the negative responses one returning from war has of their surroundings. Eliot shows the melancholy of his text while saying “our dried

    Read More

  • Message of Hope in Eliot's The Waste Land, Gerontion, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

    2421 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...In "The Waste Land," Eliot delivers an indictment against the self-serving, irresponsibility of modern society, but not without giving us, particularly the youth a message of hope at the end of the Thames River. And in "Ash Wednesday," Eliot finally describes an example of the small, graceful images God gives us as oases in the Waste Land of modern culture. Eliot constantly refers back, in unconsciously, to his childhood responsibilities of the missionary in an unholy world. It is only through close, diligent reading of his poetry that we can come to understand his faithful message of hope.

    Read More

  • Cults Essay

    1534 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout our history, cults have become a prevalent part of our society. More and more cults are forming every day. Although not all of them are dangerous, some can perform practices that are toxic to their members. Cults use fear and control to gain more and more members. Once members join a cult, they are forced to perform the practices that the cult leaders require. It is through these practices that cult leaders convince their members to stay in the cult. Through mind control and scare tactics, cults have become a very powerful and dangerous part of our society.

    Read More

  • T.S. Eliot’s Powerful Use of Fragmentation in The Waste Land

    2713 Words  | 6 Pages

    T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.

    Read More

  • A Restoration of Power: Metaphor, Simile, and Imagery in Donne's "Batter My Heart"

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem opens abruptly as the speaker demands the "three personed God" (1), or the Christian Trinity, to "Batter [his] heart" (1) in order to "make [him] new" (4). The speaker's imploring plea for God to "o'erthrow" (3) and "break" (4) him, materializes the speaker, presenting a metaphor that compares him to an inanimate, factory product of God, the inventor. Like an inventor's creation, the speaker can be dismembered and rebuilt by his creator to produce an improved model. The speaker's longing wish to "rise, and stand" (2) exposes the hopelessness of his current state, and creates the image of a crumpled man, overwhelmed with the weight of his past.

    Read More

  • The Meaning Of Death In Edgar Allan Poe's Ghosts Of War

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right - only who is left”. In the story Ghosts of War, a young man named Ryan Smithson, inspired by the events of 9/11, joins the army in order to fight back. Throughout his year in combat, the experiences and adventures he faces changes him forever. During his tour, he witnesses the suffering of his brothers and the innocent people of Iraq. He tells stories of death and destruction, and deals with his haunted past through writing, saying that literature is “words that have the power to heal”. Ghosts of War is an emotional roller coaster that dives into the fight against not just the demons among men, but also the demons inside men as well.

    Read More

More about Hollow Men Religion Essay

Open Document