by Randy Pinion

Created on: December 16, 2006   Last Updated: March 15, 2010

"All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces;

Bright and early for the daily races, going nowhere; going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses, no expression; no expression

Hide my head; I wanna drown my sorrow, no tomorrow; no tomorrow

And I find it kind've funny, find it kind've sad

That the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.

And I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take

That when people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world."

From "Mad World" by Gary Jules

Imagine, if you will, a desolate wasteland of broken dreams, shattered beliefs, and blank, isolated figures. Populate this gray world with the jagged edges of a hundred forgotten rituals and the slow death of a pointless existence. This is a world of trickling sand and thorny brush filled with blind, lonely souls, drifting aimlessly from one moment to the next. This is the fractured reality of T.S. Eliot's classic, complex, and chilling "The Hollow Men."

It is possible that never before or after was Eliot's dry, flowing style better combined with the inner meaning of a poem than it was in "The Hollow Men," where Eliot's somber verse perfectly portrayed the haunting limbo that housed the titular lost souls. Moreover, few works have ever sparked so much furious debate amongst scholars of literature as they search for meaning in this, perhaps the most central of Eliot's works.

Published by T.S. Eliot in 1925, "The Hollow Men" has since become one of the most influential poems in modern history. Many would say that Eliot was responsible for breaking down the conventional barriers set up around poetry in earlier ages and changing the face of modern poetry completely and utterly (Brinnin 938). This, he accomplished through a brilliant process of using older methods and juxtaposing them against modern dilemmas and mechanics (Morace). "The Hollow Men" is one of the very best examples of this duality of nature, combining numerous allusions to older works while still facing off against the apathy of Eliot's post-World War I world and being an example of some of Eliot's more modern poetic devices and techniques. If one is able to dig through this thorny nest of overlapping styles and meanings, then the deeper themes of "The Hollow Men" slowly become clear, even if Eliot himself would have preferred readers limit themselves to a study of the work's method and structure (Brinnin 939).

Indeed, it has been said that Eliot was not always the most clear

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• Next Page >>