THE HOLLOW MEN: ARE-VISION

(Faith overthrown; hands up)

A. HIRIYANNAIAH

“The Hollow Men” is a picture of the decadent and disintegrating world, doomed to disappear. Void of spiritual vision, desiccated of religious sensibility, the hollow men collapse, with their cactus world, in a whimper. They are denied even the last glory of dying with a bang. This is a vision of horror, without any hope of redemption whatsoever. The poet looks at this doomed world, from the two ends–“Death’s other kingdom” and “Death’s twilight kingdom,” In this vision of heightened awareness of the poet, “Death’s dream kingdom” floats into its doom, as it has exhausted its life-spring, the religious sensibility. This vision is sectionalised into five: the first begins with confession of the hollow men; the second reveals the world of disguises; the third shows the cactus land of stone image; the fourth the valley of dying stars and the fifth the litany and its accompanying whimper of the collapsing world.

Coming to the analysis, the first section begins with the confession of the hollow men, giving expression to their sense of vacuity:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together.

Headpiece filled with straw

This sense of emptiness is further accentuated by the accompanying images of “dried voices”, “quiet and meaningless whisper”; “wind in dry grass” and “the rats feet over broken glass.” The objective view, as observed by “those who have crossed with direct eyes to death’s other kingdom” is also given. To them, these hollow men are “not lost violent souls” but merely the hollow and stuffed men. Here the reference to the “death’s other kingdom” is obviously to Hell. The paralysed (spiritual) force of these hollow men is the outcome of the exhaustion of the vital content of life, robbing them of colour, motion and form;

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Gesture without motion.

The poet sees death-in-life state from the vantage position of “death’s dream kingdom.” Here eyes have no place; simply they do not exist. He is reminded of other eyes, “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams” and the eyes that are sunlight revealing “a broken column.” These are the eyes that see reality; the unwholesomeness of it. As a refreshing contrast, he visualises the place where he sees “a tree swinging” and hears voices in the wind’s singing. But that sound is far more distant and more solemn than a fading star.

“Let me be no nearer” shows the determination of the poet to maintain his self-identity by wearing deliberate disguises of the visible world. This indicates the poet’s heightened awareness of the situation (human predicament) better than those “crossed staves in a field.”

He reserves the right of “final meeting” the unreserved identification in the land of twilight kingdom where complete identity makes all the disguises meaningless.

“The fading star” marks the end of a period where the stone images hold sway:

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand.

The stone images symbolise the heartless fascists (various types of brutal force) who receive the supplications of lifeless hands. One could hear the mocking tone of the poet in the imagery of “stone images” and “lifeless hands”, that too under a fading star, symbolising the vanishing era.

This cactus land, the dead land, the land of stone images and dead supplicants puts him into mind “death’s other kingdom” where religious sensibility is quickened but the objects are only broken columns, the remnants of the Ozymandian world:

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers–

The fourth section reveals the hollow valley; valley of dying stars, this broken jaw of lost kingdoms. This is the final meeting place of all mundane things–a place marked for junks. This is the Ultima Thule of the world in time. The eyes are not here; it is sheer groping on the beach of the “tumid river” of time, in silence, all hushed. The only hope, of these groping eyeless beings, is the hope of reappearance of eyes, the spiritual sight.

Dropping again into confessional tone. “Hear we go round the prickly pear, at five o’clock in the morning”, reflects the boredom of the purposeless and aimless mechanical rounds of life.

In his attempt at escape from these blind rounds, he turns for comfort to the litany of assertion of the Immanent Shadow (the Holy Ghost) that is between conception and creation, the essence and the descent. The refrain, “Life is very long, for thine is the kingdom”, echoes the faith of the old order of the world. As the world of hollow men is totally exhausted, dried and emptied, bereft of rejuvenating religious sensibility, Reality asserts its right and rivets his attention and confirms his fear about the sordid end of the world;

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.

What started as “soulful” prayer turns into ironic litany of frustration and despair.

This poem is an attempt of T. S. Eliot to rivet our attention on an exhausted world, decadent and desolate, groping towards the end of a period in an inglorious way.

The images of “broken glass, dry cellar, dry grass, staves” focuses our gaze on this irredeemable world, without the hope of redemption.

This shifting association from “direct eyes” to “eyes I dare not meet in dreams”, and “the sunlight eyes on a broken column” covers the different stages of gradual degeneration and disintegration that have pushed hollow men to this eyeless state.

The confessional tone and the accompanying litany, void of its spirit, are smothered by the inescapable whimper of the life-wearied, spiritually atrophied, visionless world of hollow men.

“Head piece filled with straw–Alas!” sums up the impotent pity of the poet who, burdened with the vision of the imminent doom, like that of Clytamnestra, accepts the doom though over-whelmed with pity for himself and others of his brotherhood.

Back