The Hollow Men By: Elliot Essay Examples

“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot
So I read through the poem a few more times, and slowly it started to become more and more apparent what this poem is actually about. I feel that this poem has a very pessimistic tone, as if the concise underlying allusion of the poem is that humanity has no future. However, principles of intellect seem to control the despair, in the way experience is consciously surveyed in the poem in abstract terms and how contrasting states of being have been distinguished. Lines 1 and 2 are probably depicting how corruption can inevitably make its way into a man’s soul, as a result of which life becomes completely empty, devoid of hope and meaning. It becomes apparent that Eliot finds the idea of death quite undesirable as he expresses in Lines 29 and 30. I get the impression that Eliot wants to camouflage himself among other hollow men. As he expresses in Lines 31, 32, 33, and then in 35, it seems to be his desire is to “wear deliberate disguises” such as and behave like the wind.
As the poem progresses, the world hollow men in live in has been described in Lines 39 and 40 as a “dead land” with “stone images,” which can certain parallel the very characters depicted by Eliot in his poem. I believe that the “twinkle of a fading star,” as Eliot mentions in line 44, that exists in that world is a symbol of the dreams and hopes from within because of which life truly becomes worth living. Eliot makes use of significant outright imagery, such as the desert, in order to express the fact that we should not let our surroundings dry us out if we want to uncover the hope and passion that lies within ourselves. Maybe I am wrong, but I felt that the message Eliot tries to convey is that we should not let the distractions of our surroundings bring us down; rather we should leave them aside and pursue our own individual dreams and passions. I believe that by “hollow,” Eliot is actually disseminating that people lose their chance to discover the burning passion lying within them when they devote their lives to meaningless or useless causes, and that makes them hollow men.