Analysis of The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot 1888 (St. Louis, Missouri, United States) – 1965 (Kensington)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
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.
Scheme | abbcdbceddc cf ghgibb axHjkhlklhk cHmnoxoc lh appqrpk shtkest ruuxix qcxc xjkxhib iMmMl vifxWH fffxWx chixxxWH nnv YYYc |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1 110101 11011 10010 111101 101101 110010 1100100 11011 11110101 010110 10111011 11100110 1111 1011111010 0101111111 1001110 10101 011 1 1111101 01110 11101 1011 1101010 110110 0101 00110 1100110 10101 111110 01110 11101 10100010 11111 001 01010101 110 111010 00110 1 11011 11101 101100 111101 0110111 1001010101 1111 011010 1001 1010111 1001100 1111 111101 1 01111 11111 01101101 011010 1101110110 01111010 11010 0011 1011110110 101 0101 1001001 11 11110 0110 1101 1 11110101 101101 11110101 11010010 010010 0010 01010 001 101 111010 010010 00010 010010 0001 101 11101 010010 0010 010100 00010 01010 0001 101 111010 111 11 1110 1101011 1101011 1101011 11011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,326 |
Words | 451 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 17 |
Stanza Lengths | 11, 2, 6, 11, 8, 2, 7, 7, 6, 4, 7, 5, 6, 6, 8, 3, 4 |
Lines Amount | 103 |
Letters per line (avg) | 18 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
About this poem
"The Hollow Men" (1925) is a poem by the modernist writer T. S. Eliot. Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised: compare "Gerontion"), hopelessness, religious conversion, redemption and, some critics argue, his failing marriage with Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot. It was published two years before Eliot converted to Anglicanism.
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"The Hollow Men" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/114806/the-hollow-men>.
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