While reading T.S. Eliot in class, glancing over the pages, three lines grabbed my attention firmly: "This is the way the world ends....", and then of course the final line stole my breath. Initially, I felt it was a bold stanza, but then I got to thinking, I've heard this before. I racked my brain long after class that night until I finally remembered where I had heard it before. Project 86, a Christian band I've been listening to for a while, has those exact lyrics in a song of theirs called Hollow Again. But wait a moment, the title of the poem in question is The Hollow Men... A band I listen to and enjoy is referencing this poem today? The song has only been out for a little over a year and it was one of my favorites on the album; so, seeing that it has ties to this Modernist poetry was exciting for me. After my first reading, I could tell that this was going to take some work, so I'm hopeful that this song and the poem can shed some light on each other to help me understand the meaning of each and also make for an interesting paper. I'll first take a look at the poem alone and then see how the song relates to it.
This poem presents difficulty immediatly in the form of the italicized quote at the beginning. The footnote indicates it is an allusion to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but not having read it, so it is lost on me. The footnote for the second line tells of an British holiday based on children re-enacting the killing of a terrorist, reminds me of The Lottery and how the children were the first to begin collecting the rocks. Opening with an obscure quote seems like something T.S. Eliot does a lot, Stephen King does it too in most of his novels. It's an affective way to set the mood of the work and it works as almost a secondary title in the way that it helps you decide how to interpret it the "right way." After the introduction, I notice that the poem is split into five separate chapters or sections. I have never seen this done in poetry before and I am wondering why do it on a piece so short. Perhaps each section contains one main idea Eliot is trying to convey. Overall, the poem is using an allegory of a scarecrow, starting with the allusion to Guido Fawkes, wasn't the phoenix in Harry Potter named Fawkes? I wonder if J.K. Rowling was alluding to this herself; the ritualistic yearly burning of this scarecrow representation is similar to the phoenix legend, burning up an then being reborn in a never-ending cycle. Over and over again, the hollow, stuffed, empty men are mentioned making them the apparent focus. It also talks of Kingdoms: "death's other Kingdom," "death's dream kingdom," "the twilight kingdom," "our lost kindgoms," "death's twilight kingdom," and "For Thine is the Kingdom." Only twice is it capitalized. They all seem similar but are they all the same kingdom, Kingdom? The poem is filled with complex metaphors and its structure is difficult to follow. Some stanzas end in a period, some go on and on and make me question if it's supposed to be a long run on sentance or not. Also, what is going on with the prickly pear? Let me see if I can make some sense of it.
In section I, the scarecrow is the center. What I'm getting is that these hollow men are like people you pass in the street or in a store, you don't know them and you don't care about them. They have no effect on your life and they don't care that they don't. "As quiet and meaningless/ As wind in dry grass/ Or rats' feet over broken glass/ In our dry cellar". It is written in the point of view of the hollow men, or one hollow man, and they are addressing those who have died, but at the same time it seems that the hollow men could be the ones who are already dead and they are addressing the living. Another way to see it is when it says "death's other Kingdom", perhaps the hollow men are the ones who went to Hell and they are addressing those who have gone to Heaven; this is backed up by how it infers that one might assume ignorently they were "Violent souls." All three seem phesable. To end my diagnosis of section I, let me further illustrate my example of passing people on the street. In a lifetime, you will pass uncountable people in your everyday life. If you try and look back and remember any given one, there is nothing there except a hollow blob of color and motion, "Shape without form, shade without color,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion...." I picture myself standing in a Super K-mart, and who surrounds me are not people I know but strangers that will forever be meaningless to my memory, hollow. All they are is a bit of color or motion you catch out of the corner of your eye and then it's gone. Some blobs are perhaps slightly clearer than others, peers for example; but the funny/sad thing is is that they are indeed hollow to me but I can't help but care what each and every one of them think about me.
Section II takes the scarecrow even further, metaphorically; and it backs up what I said about passing people by. It starts by talking about eyes he "dare not meet in death's dream kingdom;" from the footnote, I deduce that this means eyes of someone familiar, based on the fact that Beatrice was Dante's wife or sister if my memory serves. It says that such eyes do not appear, no one familiar accompanies him in his current situation. I cannot decipher lines 21-23. The rest of the stanza describes distant, somber voices that on the wind are singing. Taking it back to my example before, that is how the voice of a stranger is, distant; and if there are many strangers around it makes the air around you almost "sing" with their voices. When he says solemn, it leads me to believe that the speaker of the poem is indeed in Hell and surrounded by strangers he doesn't know. In the next stanza, he talks of deliberate disguises, such as the scarecrow garb. He is seemingly reveling in being a hollow man, being a stranger to others as they are to him. Scarecrows are meant to keep the crows away from the field and that plays into the metaphor nicely; when you're out and about, no one goes out deliberatly to meet and greet with strangers. You want to be left alone to do your own thing and many people put up blank facades to ward off any encounters that may get them in a position where they have to interact with others or get slowed down in their many, many, important things to do for the day. When I myself am out and about, I purposly ensure my gaze doesn't meet with anyone else's because they are strangers. I normally dress in clothes that do not draw attention to themselves or me and yet I hope they portray me in a positive light. In the poem, the scarecrow garb is apparently what everyone else is wearing, so that makes perfect sense that he would also wish to wear it. What confuses me in Section II is that he says "Let me be no nearer..." "No nearer--" But what the footnote about Beatrice, and proceeding to Paradise, leads me to believe he doesn't want to be nearer to is Paradise, Heaven? Perhaps if he were any nearer than the pain would be excruciating, like someone holding a hamburger over your head when you are incredibly hungry. Hell would be infinitly worse if your backyard was adjacent to one in Heaven, forever seeing what you could never have only a few feet away.
Section III begins by further illustrating his home in Hell. "Stone images/ Are raised, here they recieve/ The supplication of a dead man's hand..." What I see here is regret. He is reaching out to the past, the stone images I see as their grave stones, wishing he were still alive so he could somehow change his fate for the better. The second stanza seems like a window into a Heaven where people he cared about are praying for him, "Lips that would kiss." Is he talking about his wife, is this another allusion to Beatrice? His mind is clearly on Heaven and the few people he misses now that he is surrounded by hollow men.
In Section IV, the message of the poem is starting to take shape. They, the hollow me, are all now blind, "There are no eyes here." No more crowd of people you see but don't know, there are people surrounding you, on top of you, and you can't see any of them. They "grope together/ And avoid speech." They can't see each other anymore at all, as they could on Earth, and in that blindness they finally see that it was all ridiculous. "The hope only/ Of empty men" is that to see again so they might be able to make friends of the hollow men that accompany them in Hell, make new, pleasent memories. But then it just wouldn't be Hell, would it?
The final section, Section V, wraps it all up and ends it perfectly. I now think I understand the prickly pear, it illustrates that their existence now is completly trivial and ridiculous, matched by how trivial and ridiculous it must have been in life. For all eternity, they will be groping around painful cacti in bitter sadness and regret. Back to the backyard metephor I made earlier, they are on the adjacent lot to Heaven. If they could only see again, they could see each other and talk and make friends, etc. The prize is dangling right in front of their noses but they will never be able to see it or to take hold of it. Between this and that in all the following examples "Falls the Shadow." This is the Shadow of doubt, of ignorence and of fear. The Shadow is that period of not knowing what's going to happen, like Schrödinger’s cat. Between my turning this paper in and getting it back "Falls the Shadow." I could get a good grade, I could get a bad grade. What this poem's ultimate message is is that it is important that I at least turn it in. There is only one sure way to fail at anything and that is not to try. Its overall theme and message pertains to making friendships mainly and having new experiances. "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 he's forcefully trying to drive into your head is that, life doesn't begin once you die, there won't be some party saying "You finally made it! Time for the fun to begin!" Once you're dead, that's it, game over, endgame over. It's what you did in life that is important, you cannot just glide through it like a hollow man never taking chances or making friends and hiding who you are from everyone around you. If you do, you will end up as you began, hollow. I'm looking back and thinking perhaps it's implied there is no Heaven, nor even a real Hell, just that hollow valley and all you will ever have there is your memories of your time on this planet. People say life is short, but Eliot says "Life is very long." Both can be true. If you get caught up in the same routine, day in, day out, then there won't be much to the story of your life, making it a very short story. But, if you try and fill each day, BEEE HEEEREEE NOOOWWW, up to the brim, then looking back you will say you had a very long life. Yet another allegory to be gotten out of this is that Earth is Heaven and when you die it is Hell. "For Thine is the Kingdom," Heaven is yours, if only you reach out and grab it, getting past the Shadow. If you decide to fall prey to the Shadow, then you will live out your entire existance in Hell. If you take chances and change and evolve and make friends and treat others well then that's what your afterlife will be full of, light and goodness, Heaven, Paradiso. One more allegory of my own: it's like all through life you are making a scrapbook or photo album and that is the only thing you can take with you when you die. Everything else is just material. So, if your scrapbook is full of images of a life you enjoyed then you will have a great time going over it, over and over again. If it's filled with images of you complaining and working and decaying then you will dread looking over it at all and wish to see others' and yet, you are blind so you cannot.
This poem is overflowing with mixed metaphors and allegories of life and human nature and the state of being. It is truly a masterpiece that I thoroughly enjoyed analysing and decoding. The modernists may have liked making their work difficult and confusing, but if you give it the time it requires the payback is incredible. This poem dealt with ideas that I have forever been trying to put into words and it did a miraculous job and went farther than I could have ever gone. This poet took it upon himself to answer the greatest riddle of all, what is the meaning of life, and in doing so has come up with the best answer I have ever heard.
Epilogue:
This poem took me on a journey far longer than anticipated and I really have no reason to compare it to the song anymore, besides to understand the song itself better. So I will, to satisfy my own curiosity. The first stanza of the song flows right in line with Hollow Men. Being lost was a major theme and point of the poem. "All that I fought so hard to keep..." Must mean material items and objects, syncs perfectly with the poem. Second stanza is the same, it puts into perspective that the speaker is doomed but they have come to a revelation that is unbelievable (the world will end with a whimper). The chorus takes the lines right out of the poem and they are followed by the self affirmation that they will indeed be there forever. The third stanza sort of affirms the second in that it's too late for him, the speaker is always thinking about what he could have done and trying to help others understand what he finally understands, "But now it's far too late." The last full stanza of the song finally gets to the point, almost. Just as the speaker in Hollow Men knew his words would be unheard, so does the speaker of the song. He continues to wonder "How will we open the eyes of the dead." The last four lines say it best of all the song, all along he was lied to that if you just go out, get a job, punch in, put out, and shut up then you are living a good life and will be rewarded in the end, "with a bang." When he talks about "the safety of this empty place," I believe he is referencing the Shadow. Media and marketing in the US today are all centered around fear, ignorence and doubt. "If you don't use Crest Tartar Blocker Formula toothpaste, the girls won't kiss you. Aren't you afraid of that? If you don't look like a celebrity, you won't succeed in life. Get plastic surgery today!" There is a new show on MTV that sickens the hell out of me unlike any other show I've ever seen. "I Want A Famous Face", a weekly half-hour documentary show about teens with low self esteem that go in to get plastic surgery done to look more like their favorite teeny bopper role model. As if such deliberate disguises will make them more acceptable to society. It's more sad than anything, really.
The song is great, but it's nothing compared to the source material. It's a great ode, and a great song to listen to, but without prior knowledge of the poem, I don't think you could truly understand it. Maybe it will draw attention to the poem like it did for me. Both are great works with a lot of truth in them.