A Look At Hollow Men Summary English Literature Essay Essays

A Look At Hollow Men Summary English Literature Essay Essays A Look At Hollow Men Summary English Literature Essay Essay A Look At Hollow Men Summary English Literature Essay Essay as in, TheA Is are non here. There are no independent personalities or egos among the group. Hope continues to melt, as the stars fade or die off. The vale leads us to believe of one a celebrated Psalm from the Bible, that goes, Even though I walk through the vale of the shadow of decease, I will fear no immorality, for you are with me ; your rod and your staff, they comfort me ( Psalm 23 ) . They are in a vale of decease, but there is no 1 at that place to soothe them because they neer joined with God. The Hollow Men each used to hold their ain lands literally or metaphorically but these lands have been lost or broken like a jaw. Why a jaw? We re non sureaˆÂ ¦maybe you can state us! At any rate, here the lone true land is the Kingdom of God, and they had their opportunity to fall in it but did non. Lines 57-60 In this last of meeting topographic points We grope together And avoid address Gathered on this beach of the tumid river We eventually larn where the Hollow Men are gathered: on the Bankss of a swollen or bombastic river. They are huddled together as if they were traveling to be washed off. The river is practically overruning with H2O, in contrast to the waterlessness of the work forces and the desert around them. This is the last topographic point that they will run into before they face some more awful destiny. The river most likely represents Acheron, subdivision of the fabulous River Styx in Greece that souls must traverse into decease. To do the trip, you would hold to pay Charon, the ferryman, a coin to take you on his boat. Unfortunately, no 1 has arrived to take these psyches across. They are stranded. There s nil left to state about their dire state of affairs, so they avoid address. InA Canto 3 of DantesA Inferno, Dante asks his usher Virgil why psyches are so eager to acquire across Acheron, and Virgil responds that God s justness spurs them on so that they really want to acquire to Hell Oklahoman. But the Hollow Men ca nt even acquire to Hell. Lines 61-67 Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the ageless star Multifoliate rose Of decease s dusk land The hope merely Of empty work forces. The Hollow Men are eyeless, like a clump of belowground worms, but if the eyes return their vision could be restored. Their lone hope is if the celestial eyes come back as a star. This star would be ageless or ageless, unlike the attenuation or deceasing stars in the desert. By now you ve likely noticed that Eliot is throwing about symbols like confect at a Fourth of July parade. A multifoliate rose has many petals. Here once more Eliot is mentioning to conjecture who? Dante Alighieri. In DantesA Paradiso, the concluding vision of Eden is of a flower made up of saints, angels, and other illustrations of goodness and virtuousness. The community of Heaven is like a rose with petals made of people. Dante besides compares Mary, the female parent of Jesus, to a rose. The point of these lines is that the Hollow Men can non salvage themselves. They have no hope except for the Heavenly souls to come down and reconstruct their vision of truth and goodness. Lines 68-71 Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear bristly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five oclock in the forenoon. Admit it: if you had to blindly wait on the Bankss of a river until the terminal of clip, you might fall in custodies and get down singing Here we go round the mulberry shrub, excessively. And if you did nt hold a mulberry shrub, good, so you d merely hold to sing about the bristly pear cactus. Here we go round the mulberry shrub is a kids s vocal about people dancing around the shrub so early in the forenoon. Eliot really gives the clip at which they are dancing: 5 oclock in the forenoon. Harmonizing to one commentary on the verse form, 5:00 a.m. is the traditional clip of Christ s Resurrection ( beginning ) . The Resurrection is the most of import minute in the Christ narrative, but here the Hollow Men are executing a kids s dance around a cactus, wholly incognizant of the significance of the clip. Lines 72-76 Between the thought And the world Between the gesture And the act Falls the Shadow If you look back to lines 12-13, you ll retrieve the list of losing necessities, or things that are missing some indispensable constituent, like gesture without gesture. In this concluding subdivision of the verse form, Eliot presents a similar thought. For the Hollow Men, some cryptic shadow has fallen between some possible for action and the action itself to forestall them forA doingA anything. They have thoughts but can non convey them into world. They can travel but non organize their motions into action. The shadow falls like an Fe drape to barricade their purposes. Line 77 For Thine is the Kingdom The Hollow Men get down to state portion of a supplication but do non complete it. For Thine is the Kingdom is portion of the stoping to theA Lord s PrayerA that goes: For thine is the land, and the power, and the glorification, for of all time and of all time. Amons. You get the feeling that if the Hollow Men couldA justA get to the terminal of the supplication, possibly they would be saved. You ll detect that the word land has been used a batch in this verse form. God has his everlasting land in Heaven, and the Hollow Men had their lost lands. Lines 78-83 Between the construct And the creative activity Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is really long Here comes that Shadow once more. Concept is the minute of gestation or the beginning of thought, but creative activity is when that being comes into being. An emotion is a mental province, but a response is an action ensuing from that province. The shadow prevents one thing from taking of course to the other. If you went to the physician and he or she tapped your articulatio genus with that small gum elastic cock, and you had no physical response, it would be a job. The stanza ends with the beginning of another statement: Life is really long. You can about here the Hollow Men suspiring tiredly as they say that, as if they are bored and worn down. Compared to infinity, of class, life is pretty short. Lines 84-91 Between the desire And the cramp Between the authority And the being Between the kernel And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom The verse form gives three more illustrations of the Shadow s dirty work. It prevents desire from going the cramp of sexual satisfaction that is, climax. It besides comes between possible or authority and being, and between the higher kernel of things and the descent of this kernel into our physical universe. In instance Eliot is acquiring excessively philosophical, here s a simpler manner of seting it: the Shadow prevents things that should of course follow from one another from go oning. The stanza ends, once more, with a fragment of theA Lord s Prayer. They still ca nt state any more than this one portion of the supplication. Lines 92-94 For Thine is Life is For Thine is the The Hollow Men repeat the disconnected lines from the terminal of the last three stanzas, but this clip chopped down even further. They merely drag off, as if they ca nt retrieve how the remainder goes or hold slipped into some semi-conscious province. Cut them some slack, though: their caputs are filled with straw. Lines 95-98 This is the manner the universe ends This is the manner the universe ends This is the manner the universe ends Not with a knock but a whine. They pick up once more with another brainsick version of the Mulberry Bush vocal. The vocal provides small lessons about how to make jobs around the house, like This is the manner we wash our apparels and This is the manner we sweep the floor. ( Read the full vocal. ) ( Wow, that vocal is wholly merely a manner to flim-flam childs into making work! ) In Eliot s version, the Hollow Men are singing about how the universe ends as they dance around the bristly pear. These lines are the most celebrated and often repeated lines in the verse form. The universe ends non with a knock like you might anticipate, with some immense war between angels and devils, but with a whine, like a defeated puppy. The inquiry is, does the universe terminal this manner for everyone, or merely for the Hollow Men? Keep in head that they are the 1s singing. The terminal of the universe is, in a word, anticlimactic.