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How does religion impact literature
T s eliot's the hollow men symbolism
How does religion impact literature
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The Theme of Emptiness in “The Hollow Men”
“The Hollow Men,” a poem written by T.S. Eliot shows the narrators disgust and his faithless attitude toward all mankind. He refers to the human race as being “hollow,” (1) and having a “headpiece filled with straw,” (4) which creates the feeling and theme of emptiness. Eliot also uses allusions, symbols, and repetition as powerful, and depressing poetic devices to make mankind seem hollow.
The theme of emptiness is clearly visible throughout the poem, and it begins in the title. “The Hollow Men” refers to mankind being empty, and that there is no meaning to their life, and no purpose for the hollow men to go on. IN the first section of the poem, the second stanza states “Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion.” (11-12) Here Eliot puts strong ideas together in such a way that they seem to cancel out each other, leaving an empty feeling . In section three, Eliot used “dead,” (39) and “cactus” (40) to describe the setting, and “In deaths other kingdom/Walking alone,” (46-47) leaves the reader in an empty state of mind with no surroundings. When someone shouts into an empty, or wide area, it will always echo and repeat itself until it quietly dies off. This example of emptiness is expressed in the very last stanza of the poem, “This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a b...
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
In the poem, “The Hollow Men,” isolation is a theme that occurs often. The author, T.S. Eliot, uses the description of hollow men to emphasize his definition of isolation. The hollow men have headpieces that are filled with straw. The straw represents that the heads are empty. The hollow men may have once been associated with royalty but now are filled with straw.
The characters of The Sun Also Rises have difficulty coping with the changing world just as the Hollow Men cannot deal with change in the situation they face. The narrator of The Hollow Men end the poem on a depressing note, “This is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper” (840 THM). Through his description of the world’s end with a whimper, the narrator presents a metaphor for his life which he feels is insignificant. With this he shows his thought of inability to face his issue, showing a feeling of incompetence which is very much how the characters of The Sun Also Rises feel. For instance, Jake has an encounter with a waiter in France, but finds a simple solution, “Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money” (237 SAR). Here, Ja...
The poem “Woodchucks” by Maxine Kumin is about the dehumanization of a man to the point where he is completely opposite from the person he used to be. He is desensitized to the point where he can justify to himself a mass extermination. It shows the effect hatred and evil can have on a human’s soul and how that can change their behavior. The poem begins with the man having a prejudice against one population, the woodchucks, which finally evolves into a personal vendetta towards them. The author, Maxine Kumin, mainly uses dramatic irony and symbolism to show how the growth of evil inside of a person until all that is human is carved away. A few other literary devices are also used in her poem. These devices include characterization, alliteration, and metaphors.
... “There were no bourns./There were no quiet rooms” (18-19). Unlike the rest of the poem, this stanza has two definite sentences, making for a more emphatic, choppy rhythm. This sudden shift, combined with the words in the stanza, show very clearly that the noise and the choices will never end and he will never find peace. It is frightening to think that this could be humanity’s fate.
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot is a poem of struggle for meaning amongst the meaningless. T.S. Eliot shows the reader how in this day and age society is becoming less and less active and beginning to become more careless in the way in which we live and behave, as represented throughout the poem. It brings out all of our worlds weaknesses and flaws. Eliot brings out the fact that the human race is disintegrating. We are compared to as hollow men with no emotions, cares, and nothing inside. Hollow men all look different in some way, but inside we are all the same. We shift in whatever direction we are being blown in. In The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot examines the absence of spiritual guidance, lack of communication between individuals, and absence of direction of outstanding and pro founding leadership.
The human psyche has a desire for seeing others in pain. The dark romantics used this to create a legacy of literature that terrified their readers to the core. The dark romantics were individuals who used their pessimistic view of the world and incorporated it into their literature to invoke terror and fear into their readers. In contrast to the transcendentalists, dark romantics saw the world as evil and decaying. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” both authors use symbolism, suspense, and irony to emphasize the importance of tragedy as a theme throughout dark romantic literature.
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.
Poets with much intelligence like T.S. Eliot of his day are known to have many messages within their poetry. Sometimes these messages are those that critic something or that are enjoying something within life. Most poems are seen to be written as for example like riddles they aren’t always the easiest to pick out important messages from the poem. Rather it is much more difficult to pick these out because as the reader there might be first of all not much knowledge about the poet and his or her writing style. Or what was going on in that time era and the lifestyle and struggles back then. However, most poets always have something within simple words that become much more complex in the end when the real meaning of the poem is found by the reader. Although as mentioned sometimes these messages are more difficult to depict sometimes they are not. The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot is a poem of which is more or less a short version of one of his most famous works known as Wasteland in both these poems Eliot has a dark approach to society of his day. Although T.S. Eliot conveys many messages about life in The Hollow Men there are three very important messages he portrays which are; a people are all the same, humans living meaningless lives and our lives are full of despair.
Eliot's Themes of Death and Futility in the Poem Remind Your Self of The Hollow Men
...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.
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.
In The Hollow Men (1925) Eliot has combined the poem with a highly professional and musical verse , to match the ritualistic mode of poetry , in a way like the refrain , repetition and the monotonous rhyme and rhythm whatever measurements are utilized to achieve the effect of the futile and the meaningless yearning of the modern men as hollow men of T.S.Eliot .Murphy in his critical analysis of “The Hollow Men” he added that; “ The Hollow Men present its readers with the verbal equivalent of nonentities who recognize the meaningless choices that they have made but are content to live with them for the lack of any lingering initiative to do otherwise”(Murphy, 2007,258) Not only the actual men are empty and of less valued but their action , their voice and souls are also about the same , in the lines (8-10)their voices are matched to the dry wind on the grass or the small rat’s feet on a broken glass, in the same way the wind hits the dry grass they are exist , they can’t effect anyone around them for they only there in their shape .The image of rat , used sometimes to show how dirty small things are futile and valueless, but this time the value of the rat did not mean to show the importance of that creature
T.S Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, is written in the mood of society after World War I. By using these allusions, The Waste Land reflects on mythical, historical, and literary events. The poem displays the deep disillusionment felt during this time period. In the after math of the great war, in an industrialized society that lacks the traditional structure of authority and belief, in the soil that may not be conductive to new growth (Lewis). Eliot used various allusions that connected to the time period and the effect of the war on society in his poem. Aided by Eliot’s own notes and comments, scholars have been able to identify allusions to: the Book of Common Prayer, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles-Louis Philippe, James Thomas, Guillaume Appollinaire, Countess Marie Larsich, Wyndham Lewis, nine books of the Bible, John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Richard Wagner, Sappho, Catullus, Lord Byron, Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, J.G. Frazer, Jessie L. Weston, W.B. Yeats, Shakespeare, Walter Pater, Charles Baudelair, Dente, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and John Webster—all within the first section of 72 lines, about one allusion every two lines (Lewis). Using various allusions, Eliot was able to connect to the fact that he lived in a modern day waste land as a result of the destruction caused by World War I. Eliot used the allusions to show that death brings new beginnings and change, and love still flourishes.
imagery to compare life as “The Hollow Men” to Hell and endless torment. It is possible that compared to Vivienne’s vivacious and boisterous personality, Eliot felt as insignificant as the hollow men. He concludes the poem with “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper” (82). Such an ominous ending invokes both thought and sympathy in readers.