ipl-logo

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

822 Words4 Pages

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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

Show More
Related
586 Words | 3 Pages

A story that tells only of death, sorrow, and the bitter truth about World War One, Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet On The Western Front, is simply a story of a generation of men who were lost to war. Told through the eyes of a 19 year old boy named Paul Bäumer, as he shows what World War One was, in all of its horrific glory. This ‘glory’ so to speak was a gruesome, traumatizing experience for many of the soldiers that fought in World War One, this experience engraved in their memory, that would continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives. In the epigraph in All Quiet On The Western Front, it tells that “ even though [the soldiers] may have escaped shells, [they] were destroyed by the war”. It is evident to say that even though some soldiers escaped death from the war, they all will be scared from the experiences they had.

Read More
556 Words | 3 Pages

The lost generation present in All Quiet on The Western Front by Remarque showcases the innocence taken away from the soldiers who were forced to partake in the war, and emphasizes the frustration about the loss of innocence forced upon the soldiers. Remarque’s use of personification in his work, “The war swept us away.” The war is unable to physically sweep you away and the composer implies that men were powerless to the events and consequences. The use of personification evokes the reader to connect with their emotions while reading All Quiet on The Western Front and acknowledge what the lost generation had to deal with, and how they felt powerless in the war. By saying that the war swept us away, Remarque positions us to understand that although the

Read More
1422 Words | 6 Pages

Veterans returning from the front, some with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or others with more debilitating conditions may have been unable to fully contribute to their community and economy. In many ways, had these men not gone to war, the men may have been able to head more productive lives. In the opening of the second chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front , the narrator, Paul Baumer is venting about the romanticism of war versus the reality they are experiencing and speaking about how the older men deal with it, “They are able to think beyond it, we however are gripped by it. … We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland.

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another" (Remarque, 263). Before the war, none of these men had experienced loss, or terror, but after being in the war, those are the only things they

Read More
523 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the short story, “The War Prayer,” Mark Twain depicts how one copes with the notion of war. Specifically, this community dealt with the depressing news that their country would go to war through prayer. In this case, prayer was their one defense mechanism and source of therapy during times of trouble. Throughout the short story, the reader is able to understand the harsh consequences that come with war and the thought process that one many go through prior to entering a war. Mark Twain utilizes, tone, satire and logos in order to efficiently portray the immense sense of distress that everyone was experiencing during this difficult instant in time.

Read More
417 Words | 2 Pages

Alfred Prufrock are an echo of To His Coy Mistress’ “Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball” (41-42). Here an allusion is made to bring forth that contrast between the two characters. With only two lines, Eliot is able to draw a potent connection between the difference in the characters. The inclusion of this allusion can also be interpreted in a myriad of ways that is dependent on the reader and their understanding of the source alluded to. Eliot may not have wanted to address a certain issue directly so he shifted the responsibility of interpretation to the

Read More
664 Words | 3 Pages

Melancholy and darkness make their way from every line of the work. From the beginning, Eliot hints that the protagonist walks through the night, under the “lunar synthesis” and

Read More
1442 Words | 6 Pages

Also in line 19, the word “autumn” appears, and it gives the image of the fall of life, and a time that is near death. Even more, “shroud” which is used to describe people’s heart, originally means a piece

Read More
1186 Words | 5 Pages

a voice! ... to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart.” (68) T.S Eliot furthers this idea in The Hollow Men, indicating how Kurtz’s voice is the only part of him that is not empty. Kurtz’s voice attempts to hide his emptiness and darkness that he acquired from his actions in the Congo. Unlike the accountant who remains pristine, Kurtz suffers and dies with his surroundings.

Read More
754 Words | 4 Pages

In his poem “The Hollow Men,” T. S. Eliot implies that with a loss of religion comes a loss of substance, purpose, and even humanity. Beginning the poem, Eliot compares the “hollow men” to scarecrows in order to characterize the men, as is in their name, as hollow and void of substance. Most apparent is when the speaker describes, “We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw” (4-6). Scarecrows are a symbol synonymous with emptiness, with their straw insides.

Read More
303 Words | 2 Pages

The poem aims to glorify soldiers and certain aspects of war, it goes on to prove that in reality there really isn 't good vs bad on the battlefield, it 's just a man who "sees his children smile at him, he hears the bugle call, And only death can stop him now—he 's fighting for them all.", and this is our hidden meaning.

Read More
524 Words | 3 Pages

The imagery is also used to prepare the reading for the end with the line “the air was damp, the silence close and deep”. This line showing that death was near and soon after finding this Myop comes across a dead

Read More
714 Words | 3 Pages

Eliot twists the expected symbolism of water which is life, but Eliot uses water to show there is no life. As this is done, Eliot tries to connect with water throughout The Wasteland. Eliot’s message by seeking water, but there is none shows that The Wasteland seeks a living source but a living object cannot make it through The Wasteland. Since there is no

Read More
1060 Words | 5 Pages

Literary Analysis A poem in fragments is the manner in which author T.S. Eliot describes his remarkable work The Waste Land. The Waste Land is esteemed as a modernist text for that it is labor intensive pushing past the previous genres, leaving behind the democracy and wistfulness of Whitman and Realism 's weight on reality and realness with innovative thoughts of money, intimacy, intellect, industry and individualism. The Wasteland contains five spasmodic divisions designed each in separate sections combining multiple voices, literary characters, historical allusions, quotations and glimpses into contemporary life through absurd images, myths, and legends. The reader becomes lost in a maze of past literature swarming into a piece of its own.

Read More
1185 Words | 5 Pages

The characteristics of modernity are: pessimism, frustration, isolation, total sense of loss; modern writers had no sense of purpose, the anxiety of uncertainty, meaninglessness, no values and miscommunication. The Hollow Men (1925) is a poem written by T.S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot’s poems, absurdity, fragmentation and overlapping, but it is crucial to connect this poem most with the World War 1 which caused the dark view since wars cause destruction and frustration. Moreover, the difficulty of hope and being optimistic. This poem is divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines.

Read More

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

Related Topics

Open Document