23 pages • 46 minutes read
T. S. EliotThe Hollow Men
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“The Hollow Men” is a poem composed of 100 lines (including the opening epigraph) broken into five cantos. Each canto contains an irregular number of stanzas, with 17 stanzas in total. The poem is written in free verse, meaning it has no set form, meter, or rhyme scheme. The overall effect is one of controlled chaos; the first stanza opens with tight lines and a consistent rhythm, but the poem quickly introduces new forms and rhythms as the narrative progresses. By the end of the poem, the form has completely disintegrated. The final lines are erratic and read as incomplete. This technique is used to parallel the similar disintegration of European culture and humanity following the first world war.
The poem does not utilize a consistent rhyme scheme, but it makes use of internal rhymes or partial rhymes to enhance its rhythm. For example, the closing consonant sounds in “Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass / Or rats’ feet over broken glass” (Lines 7-9), or “Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion” (Lines 78-80). Another phrase that utilizes assonance is “And the existence / Between the essence / And the descent” (Lines 87-89). However, these patterns always dissipate quickly, suggesting the speaker has a tenuous hold on reality. Toward the end of the poem, the form introduces select right-justified lines to suggest an external voice guiding the speaker.
Allusion
“The Hollow Men” is filled with allusions, particularly to literature and the Christian bible. The opening epigraph references first Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, then the British tradition of celebrating Guy Fawkes Day. The poem also makes several allusions to heaven and the afterlife: “death’s other Kingdom” (Line 14) and “In death’s dream kingdom” (Lines 20, 30) suggest these other worlds. Notably, “kingdom” is only capitalized in the first instance; this may suggest that the former refers to heaven while the latter refers to hell, or an in-between place of dreaming. Later, the speaker calls this place “the twilight kingdom” (Line 38), suggesting even more of a removal from heaven.
As the poem progresses, the speaker arrives at “this last of meeting places” (Line 57), which is described as “this beach of the tumid river” (Line 60). Rivers are common motifs in stories as a boundary between worlds; here, the allusion likely refers to Acheron, a branch of the River Styx. This river appeared in Dante’s Inferno, a poem that resonated with T.S. Eliot and informed other aspects of his work. By blending different, contrasting cultures and religions, the poet creates a space where all people come together and face the same empty end.
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The clearest religious allusion comes toward the end of the poem, in which the ending of the Lord’s Prayer (“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever”) begins to echo through the language. The poem’s form creates a call-and-answer shape in which the speaker hears these words and attempts to utter them in return, but is unable to reach the ending.
Repetition
The poem uses several devices to give it a disjointed effect while also contributing to the overall rhythm of the piece. Notably, several lines, phrases, and words are repeated multiple times to emphasize a mood or idea. The opening lines, “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men” (Lines 1-2), use confessional anaphora to orient the reader. The second stanza breaks the established rhythm and uses repetition to create a new one: “Shape without form, shade without colour / Paralysed force, gesture without motion” (Lines 11-12). Several other stanzas utilize anaphora as well, such as “There, the eyes are / Sunlight on a broken column / There, is a tree swinging” (Lines 22-24) and “Let me be no nearer / In death’s dream kingdom / Let me also wear” (Lines 29-31). The phrase “no nearer” also repeats in Line 36.
The third canto opens with repeated phrases in “This is the dead land / This is cactus land” (Lines 39-40), a pattern that again appears in the following canto: “In this valley of dying stars / In this hollow valley” (Lines 54-55). The fifth and final canto is largely repetition, beginning with a variation on a repeating folk rhyme and flowing into a series of phrases that begin with “Between:”
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
[…]
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response (Lines 74-81).
This repetition creates a sense of oscillating currents within the poem. The poem ends with three repetitions of its penultimate line, “This is the way the world ends” (Lines 95, 96, 97), before reaching its closing line.
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By T. S. Eliot
