The Hollow Men By T. S. Eliot Questions and Answers
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The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot Analysis:
The poem, “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot is about human nature in this world and relationship f mortality and eternity. The hollow men are not capable of performing any religious deeds. They are stuffed men. They have their ideal but cannot perform. They are nothing but the effigies filled with straw. They do not dare to meet holy virgin. They live on cactus land. They whisper for their nothingness.
These hollow men lament their hollowness. They are stuffed with straw and they are ready for burning. They long for death. They wait to be ferried by Charon, the ferryman.Â
To them the glaring burning eyes of Charon are both dreaded and desired. The hollow men turn back, desperately to their memories of his world only to find a ‘waste land’, the sun shining down on a fallen tower, wind blowing the sand and distant voices.Â
They dread the reality of death and after-life, as they dread the reality of life in this world. In death’s ‘dream kingdom’, they want to remain hollow and scare crows like “Rat’s coat crowskin, crossed staves”.
The Part-III of the defines this similitude of death’s kingdom in relation to the worship of hollow men. A dead, arid land like its people, it raises stone images of the spiritual which are supplicated by the dead.
Part IV explores the impulse in relation to the land, which now darkens as the valley of the shadow of death. The land is shown as the valley of the shadow of death through such images as ‘this valley of dying stars’ and ‘this hollow valley’.
Part V develops the reality not the hope of empty men. The hollow men marching in a circle sing a parody of the children’s nursery song: “Here we go round the mulberry bush”. There is no spring but winter and death in the hollow men’s song.Â
Life is frustrated at every level and this accounts for the nature of the land and the character of its people. Due to this frustration the eyes are obscured and the land is a realm of shadows. The hope of redemption is nullified by the sense of vacuity which engulfs the lives of the hollow men.
The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot Questions Answers
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Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated to commemorate the Gun Powder Plot and the execution of Guy Fawkes, the Catholic frantic party responsible for the failed plot to blow up parliament with King James I.Â
But the epigram is relevant in that the men of the present generation in Eliot’s poem are as hollow as the stuffed effigies of Guy Fawkes burnt on that day.Â
Dwelling at ‘death’s dream kingdom’ and rejected both by heaven and hell, they stay permanently on the bank of the river Acheron, waiting vainly for Charon, the demon ferryman to carry them over to the other world which indicates two territories – heaven and hell.Â
They live without flame and without praise; they never actively choose between good and evil, and therefore are never spiritually alive. They dare to face the men living in ‘death’s other kingdom’ who live a life of decision and purpose.
Ans: At a primary level the “fading star” is an echo of the nursery rhyme, “twinkle, twinkle, little star…” as also an echo of Shelley’s Skylark being “a star of heaven” whose music is like “vernal showers/ On the twinkling grass”. They together create an atmosphere of childish and adolescent romantic feeling as remembered by the hollow men.Â
5) What are the death’s kingdom?
Ans: In “The Hollow Men”, T. S. Eliot refers to two kingdoms – ‘death’s dream kingdom’ and ‘death’s other kingdom’. The former also referred to as ‘twilight kingdom’ and ‘lost kingdom’, is the death-in-life existence inhabited by the hollow men who, rejected both by heaven and hell, drift pointlessly and stay permanently on the bank of the river Acheron, waiting vainly for Charon, the demon ferrymen to carry them over to the other world, i.e. heaven or hell. ‘Death’s other kingdom’ implies a higher moral and spiritual kingdom of death.
6) Why do the hollow men want to “wear/Such deliberate disguises”? What do “Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves” suggest?
Ans: The hollow men want to wear deliberate disguises to resist self-knowledge and to evade responsibility.
The expression “Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves” refers to the scarecrow suggestive of the effigy off Guy Fawkes. There is a note of guilt and self-contempt, since the disguises that the hollow men assume are dehumanizing and emphasize their hollowness.
7) “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams” – Whose eyes are referred to here? Why does the speaker dare not meet them?
Ans: The eyes of the inhabitants of ‘death’s other kingdom’ directed towards oneself for self-scrutiny are referred to here.
The poet himself who is a representative of hollow men dares not meet the ‘direct eyes’ because he knows very well about his own spiritual vacuity that is scared of meeting higher morality and spirituality of those who live a life of decision and purpose in ‘death’s other kingdom’.
8) Why does the poet not want the final meeting in the twilight kingdom?
Ans: The poet who himself is a representative of the hollow men does not want the final meeting with the ‘direct eyes’ of the inhabitants of ‘death’s other kingdom’ because the meeting is dreaded as the eyes will compel the speaker to scrutinize himself and make him aware of his own inadequacy. But at the same time the meeting is desired as it is the only hope of salvation. The strong negatives testify both to the resistance and to the desire. Here there is an allusion to Dante’s encounter with Beatrice in “Purgatorio XXX” Â
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