Assignment of 20th Century Poetry

Submitted to: Ma’am Munazzah Javed

Submitted by: Group 3, 7th Semester, Section A
Group Members:

Sawera Asghar 85

Asma Aslam 61

Sadaf Rasheed 73

Ashvah Lodhi 59

Aliza Mehfoz 97

Urwa kanwal 19

Aqsa Irfan 21

Rubina Shabir 67
Question no. 1
Critical Appreciation of the Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot:
The Hollow Men was written by T.S. Eliot in 1925.Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) is regarded as one of
the most important and influential poets of the twentieth century, with poems like ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock’ (1915), The Waste Land (1922), and ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925) assuring him a place in the ‘canon’
of modernist poetry. The Hollow Men is based on existentialism theory.

The 'hollow men' refers to the societal decay, faithlessness, religious confusion, despair, disillusionment, state
of the world in disarray and moral emptiness of Europe post-World War I.

With ‘The Hollow Men,’ Eliot wrote some of the most quoted lines in poetry:

‘This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper’ (97-98).

‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot is rich in symbols, allusions and meaningful images. The men
are depicted as living dry, barren, and broken lives. It is a free verse poem that was written
without a specific rhyme scheme or meter in mind.

Analysis:
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
Poem begins with the epigraphs. There are two epigraphs which throw light on the theme of the
poem. The first epigraph Mistah Kurtz- he dead is taken, from Conrad's novel The Heart of
Darkness. These words were spoken by Marlowe who reports the death of Kurtz. Mistah Kurtz
was the agent of a colonial compliance, living in the interior of Africa. He was very harsh and
violent. He died in Africa. According to Eliot, it is better to be violent and evil than to be inactive
and dead like the hollow men of today.
The second epigraph is slightly more complicated and is connected to the historical figure Guy
Fawkes and his plot to blow up Parliament in the early 1600s.
A penny for the old Guy is a line of a song sung by children who celebrate Guy Fawkes day. The
children beg for money to buy fire works for the celebration of the day. They carry the effigy of
Guy made of old clothes, stuffed with straw and paper. In the evening, the effigy is burnt on the
top of a bonfire in the midst of the deafening sounds of the fire-works fixed around the effigy.
Guy Fawkes was a notorious Catholic who plotted to blow up the parliament house and thereby
kill the King and minister on 5th November, 1605. He was arrested and hanged. In his memory,
Guy Fawkes day is observed in England on 5th November every year. Eliot suggests that the
hollow men of today are like the effigy of Guy Fawkes which is stuffed with straw, and burnt by
the children.

Section I:
We are the hollow men, the unreal men, stuffed from inside. Eliot says that their minds are full
of negativities. They are out of passion. They have lost their enthusiasm. He wanted to highlight
war scenario. He says, Our brains are not filled with intelligence but with straws. The speaker
declares that he is part of a group of empty people. These people are stuffed, perhaps like
scarecrows, and lean against each other with their heads full of straw. "Oh well," the speaker
says. Their voices are so dried-out that they can barely be heard when they whisper to each
other, and what they say is as meaningless as the rustling of wind in dead grass, or the skittering
of rats over shattered glass in a dry cellar.
We have the shapes of human beings but not their nature and qualities. We are shapes, but
without any color; our force is paralyzed and we can only make gestures but no motion.
Those who have crossed over to the other kingdom of the dead, looking straight ahead the whole
time, don't remember these hollow men as lost, angry spirits (if they remember them at all), but
rather as empty people, as people stuffed, metaphorically, with straw.
Section II:
The speaker sees eyes in his dreams but refuses to look back at them. In death’s dream kingdom
(perhaps a reference to Heaven), these eyes don’t appear. There (likely in the speaker’s dream,
though what “there” refers to is deliberately ambiguous), the eyes the speaker sees are like
sunshine on a broken column. I can hear the song of the wind. This vision appears like distant
and dim light of a fading star. I do not wish to be near to the kingdom of death. I would like to
avoid it, by wearing deliberate disguises like the scare crow-wooden poles covered with a hat
and a coat in a corn field. The scare-crow would move according to the impact of the wind and it
would have no impulse of its own. (The condition of the hollow men is also the same.) I am not
prepared for my final meeting with death because I dread the very idea of going into death's
dream kingdom.
Section III.
The world of the hollow men is a dead land, it is unproductive, it is like the land of the cactus.
Here only stone images are put up. These idols are worshipped by the hollow men. They receive
the prayers from the hands of dead men (hollow men)under the light of a fading star. I wonder, if
it is like this world, in the kingdom of death. We here wake up alone at an hour and we tremble
with love when we kiss the lips that we love. We offer our prayers to the broken stones.
Section IV:
In our worlds, there is no light in the eyes of faith. Our eyes are dim and sunk. In this dimly-lit
valley of dying stars, there is hardly any flow of light This life is like a piece of broken-jaw cut
out from the entire human body.
This is the final meeting place. The hollow men walk blindly, silently, together; they gather on
the shore of a swollen river.
The hollow men are blind, unless their eyesight suddenly returns—like an undying star, like a
rose with many leaves, a rose that belongs to death’s shadowy kingdom. That rose is the only
hope for empty people like the hollow men.
Section V:
In this world, in the manner of the childish nursery rhyme we go round and round the prickly
pear tree in place of the mulberry tree, early in the morning. This movement leads nowhere. In
between the idea and the action necessary to concretize it, between the resolution and the follow-
up action, the shadow of fear falls. In such case, our only refuge lies in a prayer to God to
remove our fear and frustration. Between the thinking and the execution for fruition, between the
feeling and the achievement, the shadow falls. Life appears very long and weary; Between the
desire and the action, between the inner power and its external manifestation, between the seed
and the fruit falls the shadow of doubt and fear. In such a case the only hope lies in a sincere
prayer to God for strength and courage. We cannot even find courage to utter the words of prayer
seeking God's help. We feel tired, exhausted and lifeless. This is perhaps the way in which our
world ends, not with a loud voice but with a painful and halting whisper. Eliot says that our
society is demolishing. Our civilization is going towards an end. It gives us a new hope of life,
we have the opportunities to rebuilt it. We are blessed that we can reconstruct our culture and
civilization. He says that that the world will revive. According to Christian believes , There is
life after death and reconstruction of civilization shows the beginning of new life (life after
death).

Question No. 2
Stylistics Analysis of the poem The Hollow Men.
Style:
The Hollow Men is a personal poem. It presents the poet's views on contemporary life. It is a cry
of despair unrelieved by hope. Modern civilization, which is the pride of many nations has been
shown as negative and lacking all the values of life.
Speaker or Narrator:
The poem is mainly spoken in the first-person plural, except when a singular voice speaks, in the
poem’s second part.
Form and Meter
The poem is written in free verse; It is a poem of 98 lines divided into two epigraphs and five
parts. The final section is the crux of whole poem.
Metaphors
“We are the hollow men,
We are the stuffed men.”
The speakers compare themselves to scarecrows.
“The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star,
Multifoliate rose”
The eyes, a symbol of both faith and judgment in the poem, become the “perpetual star,” a
symbol for the Christian faith, and then “rose,” a symbol of both Jesus and Paradise.
Similes
“Our dried voices, when
We whisper together,
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat’s feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.”
The speakers compare their voices to the sounds of “wind in dry grass” and “rat’s feet over
broken glass” because they have the qualities of being “quiet and meaningless.”
Alliteration:
Crow skin, crossed
Repetition of cr sounds
Assonance:
Man’s, hand
Repetition of “an” sound
Repetition:
“This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Genre
Elegy, choric ode, dramatic monologue, lyric, and meditation.
Setting
A desert by a tumid river
Tone
Despairing, pessimistic, negative
Allusions
First Epigraph: Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness.
Second Epigraph: Guy Fawkes
Synecdoche
“The eyes are not here,
There are no eyes here”
The eyes are a part of the body of the hollow men, the part that could see if they had faith.
Personification
“We are the hollow men,
We are the stuffed men.”
The poem personifies the “hollow men/stuffed men,” giving them voices as if they were human.
Onomatopoeia
“Not with a bang but a whimper.”
“Bang” and “whimper” are both words that phonetically imitate the sounds they describe.
Themes:
Decline of western civilization, cultural decay, faithlessness, barrenness, emptiness.
Symbolism and Imagery:

Stuffed men=emptiness of human beings, filled with useless things

Straw=prejudice, biases

Dry grass=barrenness

Cross=life after death, sign of Christianity

Kingdom=life after death, heaven

Eyes=day of judgement, superpower, sightless of human beings

Sunlight=truth

Broken column= decline of western civilization

Rat’s coat, crow skin=contagious diseases, dangerous diseases

Stone heart= emotionless

Star=Hope

Broken stone=false idols

Whimper=rebirth of society, life after death, voice of new born child