The Hollow Men

“The Hollow Men” is a modernist, free verse poem by American-English poet T.S. Eliot. Originally published in 1925, this poem is believed to have been inspired by Eliot’s experiences in war-ravaged Europe during World War I (1914-1918) and its aftermath on European culture. The poem is divided into five cantos and uses literary and religious allusions to convey themes of emptiness, self-erosion, redemption, and cultural decay. The poem’s fragmentary and unmetered form contribute to these themes and reflect the broader modernist literary movement of the early 20th century.

In the tradition of literary voyages through the underworld and dark unknown places, the poem follows a nameless man among “Hollow Men” who exist in a dystopian world of the spiritually dead. The men are lost and broken souls on a desolate landscape, partially seeking salvation but paralyzed by shame and disillusionment. Like its predecessor “The Waste Land” (1922), Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” was very widely read, deeply impacting Anglo-American literary culture, and it is known especially for its now famous last four lines.

Poet Biography

Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born poet, literary critic, and dramatist. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri on September 26, 1888, but moved to England at the age of 25. There he would live out the rest of his days, eventually obtaining British citizenship and renouncing his American one. His most famous works include his narrative poem “The Waste Land,” and his poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939), which was adapted into the Broadway stage musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1981.

Eliot faced challenges in childhood because he suffered from an internal physical disability, which meant he could not participate in some of the more active social events. Instead he turned to literature, including adventure stories like those by Mark Twain. He studied briefly at the Sorbonne in Paris before settling in England, where he married his first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Both suffered from addiction and mental illness, and the marriage eventually disintegrated. He later married his much younger secretary, Esmé Valerie Fletcher. He also maintained a complex, lifelong romantic friendship with a woman named Emily Hale. In 2020, records of their correspondence were released to the public.

Eliot began publishing his first poems in 1905. He released his first full-length collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917; however, the majority of his work was published individually. Over his long career, he had a relatively small body of work. His poetic style draws heavily from the work of Dante Alighieri, the Romantic poets, and his contemporary Ezra Pound. He also became known for his plays, including The Cocktail Party (1949), which won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. In 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In addition to his personal writing, Eliot spent much of his career in publishing. He worked for Faber and Faber, where he helped launch the careers of numerous poets including W. H. Auden and Ted Hughes. He died of lung illness in his home in London in 1965. In 1983, he was honored with a posthumous Tony award for Cats.

Poem Text

Mistah Kurtz-he dead

           A penny for the Old Guy

                       I

   We are the hollow men

   We are the stuffed men

   Leaning together

   Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

   Our dried voices, when

   We whisper together

   Are quiet and meaningless

   As wind in dry grass

   Or rats’ feet over broken glass

   In our dry cellar

   Shape without form, shade without colour,

   Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

   Those who have crossed

   With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

   Remember us—if at all—not as lost

   Violent souls, but only

   As the hollow men

   The stuffed men.

                             II

   Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

   In death’s dream kingdom

   These do not appear:

   There, the eyes are

   Sunlight on a broken column

   There, is a tree swinging

   And voices are

   In the wind’s singing

   More distant and more solemn

   Than a fading star.

   Let me be no nearer

   In death’s dream kingdom

   Let me also wear

   Such deliberate disguises

   Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

   In a field

   Behaving as the wind behaves

   No nearer—

   Not that final meeting

   In the twilight kingdom

                       III

   This is the dead land

   This is cactus land

   Here the stone images

   Are raised, here they receive

   The supplication of a dead man’s hand

   Under the twinkle of a fading star.

   Is it like this

   In death’s other kingdom

   Waking alone

   At the hour when we are

   Trembling with tenderness

   Lips that would kiss

   Form prayers to broken stone.

                     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.

                           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

   And the act

   Falls the Shadow

                                   For Thine is the Kingdom

   Between the conception

   And the creation

   Between the emotion

   And the response

   Falls the Shadow

                                   Life is very long

   Between the desire

   And the spasm

   Between the potency

   And the existence

   Between the essence

   And the descent

   Falls the Shadow

                                   For Thine is the Kingdom

   For Thine is

   Life is

   For Thine is the

   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.

Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” All Poetry, 1925.

Summary

In Canto I, the speaker is part of a collective of dead “hollow men” (Line 1), or scarecrow-like figures who cannot find the energy to speak or move. When they do share ideas, their words are empty and directionless. Others who have made their way to heaven barely remember them, and then only as these hollow figures. In Canto II, the speaker encounters eyes in his dreams, but avoids looking at them. In heaven, there are other eyes, and growth, and song. These things seem like they are a galaxy away. The speaker is afraid of going to heaven and disguises himself as a scarecrow to avoid detection.

In Canto III, the hollow men are in a barren landscape with only cacti growing. There are stone effigies to which the dead men bow down. The speaker wonders if heaven is as empty as this place, where the hollow men are aching for love but instead use their lips to pray to the statues. In Canto IV, the speaker states there are no eyes in this empty land, which was once a piece of heaven. The men quietly gather together on a riverbank for solace, and the speaker acknowledges that their only hope is to be accepted into heaven.

In Canto V, the hollow men dance together around a cactus to keep themselves occupied. They are caught in a place of status between ideas and conceptions, feelings and reactions, desires and fulfilments. They try to voice the Lord’s Prayer, but they are unable to complete it. Instead, they gather together and wait for the end of the world.