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Analysis of The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot

like desert which symbolize emptiness where "there is dead land, cactus land / Here the stone images" .Stone (lifeless) images of spiritual is meant here. It is a dead land like its inhabitants. Here the representation of the spiritual world and worship of hollow men (its inhabitants) are depicted. Dead worship and supplicate those stone images. "Under the twinkle of fading star" gives a remoteness from reality, life, spirit and naturally spiritual. The narrator wonders whether being death and this world is the same. "Death's other kingdom" is related with the world hollow men lives in other words Eliot's view of world at his time. Narrator fears the afterworld will be empty as this world. He will be awakening by lips praying to broken stones. The narrator fears also that whether death is lack of spiritual like this world. As it is mentioned before, the hollow men are searching for the salvation. Since they are in life in death, the speaker wonders whether salvation can be achieved by death.


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.
Analysis of Part IV: " The eyes are not here/ There are no eyes here" In this part the narrator become progressively indifferent to the eyes of dead in contrast to previous lines of the poem. The fading star in previous stanzas becomes "dying star". The darkness increases as the shadow of the death in the hollow valley of death emerges. "Gathered on this beach of the tumid river" is an allusion to Dante's Inferno, on the far side of the river there is Hell .They gather on the banks of the river to get to "death's other kingdom". Eliot uses the word "sightless" because without any eyes (eyes of death) they don't have any sight. However, "multifoliate rose", which is a symbol of paradise in Dante's Divine Comedy, is their hope for salvation. "Sightless unless the eyes reappear as the perpatual star/ Multifoliate rose" They will have sight again when the eyes reappear as the perpetual star and then as the multifoliate rose.
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


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