Loss Of Hope In T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men

Although there is a glimmer of hope in T.S Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men”, the return of WWI war-veterans are not able to find the hope they once knew, thus resulting in a gradual loss of faith in God. Eliot begins the veterans gradual loss of faith by incorporating motionless actions and colorless objects surrounding the WWI. The voices of the men are “quiet and meaningless” and “wind in dry grass” as if their voice no longer means anything (9-10). The emphasize sound of “SS” at the ending of meaningless and grass represents the wind carrying away the men’s voices into an empty void due to their loss of hope. The men talking into an empty void signifies the veterans loss of hope in god, or someone answering prayers. As the men continuously

Eliot emphasizes the men’s loss of hope by having Eliot’s reader understand that without the shape having form and color, the men no longer share a meaning for life, the men are now “violent souls, but only / As the hollow men” who lack the emotions toward faith (18-19). The men have fought in trying to regain their faith in god with eyes in “death’s other kingdom” but with no one answering the men’s prayers, the men have given up their hope in finding a peaceful afterlife (16). Once the men have met death’s other kingdom through dreams, eyes appear in “Sunlight on a broken column” and hear voices that are “more distant and more solemn” (25,27). Eliot’s metaphor here signifies the men’s broken

The men are receiving a “supplication of a dead man’s hand” with the “twinkle of a fading star” (45-46). Eliot emphasizes the moment of the men pleading for someone to answer to pleas by giving them a moment of hope, but having it crash down upon them with the star, or god becoming further away. The men are stuck in a “hollow valley” with “broken jaw[s] of our lost kingdom” (57-58). Here, the significance of the “hollow valley” represents death looming over the men, while the broken jaws symbolize the men no longer being able to talk with god since the men lost faith. The men are now in the “last of meeting places”, searching blindly for the “perpetual star”, or god fades away, with the hope of “empty men” (65,67). Eliot represents god as a “star” because god is what the veterans have been searching for in restoring their faith, only to have the men experience the emptiness of hope come crashing down on the men once again. The men have moments of hope in restoring their faith in god, only to be met with the reality of a fading idea of death’s