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is the maddening, groping immobility of the hollow men themselves as they quest for the resolution of some deep internal conflict. As such, many parts of the poem lay in stark contrast with one another, yet no single one ever wins out above the others, just as the hollow men do not manage to chose their own fate by the poem's end, instead opting to sink into maddened apathy. The bleak world and mood portrayed in the poem's opening and ending sections (From its cacti-ridden wasteland appearance to the anticlimactic "whimper" that marks its ending) is contrasted heavily with the glimpse of hope found in the mentions of angelic grace and possible forgiveness in section IV. The final section's string of opposing extremes (Between the conception of an action and its actual execution) expands this motif of contrasting elements, and even goes on to illustrate the lost, confused nature of the titular "hollow men" by using words carefully chosen to suggest that either extreme is as good or bad as the next when it comes to accomplishing anything (Smith).

The need of the hollow men to find some way out of their current situation is further explored by the careful usage of poetic method and allusion to show that often, neither extreme offered them is necessarily bad, or at least not nearly as much as the ground that lies between. Indeed, the "Shadow" which falls "Between the motion and the act . . . the conception and the creation" (lines 74-5, 78-9) seems much more menacing than any of the surrounding terms. Moreover, the whispering middle ground of indecision in which the hollow men are trapped seems to be even more torturous than either the final judgment of death's "other kingdom" and the piercing eyes it contains or the glimpsed hope of redemption in the angelic light of the Dantean rose. These hollow men are caught at the point in which they know that their current path will conclude only in damnation and despair, yet they are too fearful of the possibility of unfortunate consequences to leave the unbearable, yet somehow comfortable, middle ground in order to seek forgiveness (Or whatever positive end one may view the few hopeful lines of the poem to be speaking of). Indeed, the most bitter and depressing part of the poem is that, by it's end, the narrator has been overwhelmed by the hand of apathy again, his mental journey silenced by the old despair. The world may not truly be coming to a close, but any hope of forward motion for these unfortunate souls, forever

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