In the Comments section below, please post a response of at least one full paragraph (min. 5 sentences). Your assignment is twofold: 1) you are to demonstrate a clear understanding of the text by attempting to summarize the text's argument as precisely as possible, and 2) you are to use your comment to ask the text (or ask your peers) at least one thoughtful question.
Remember: your comment can respond directly to other students' posts on this text. The goal of this forum is to offer an opportunity for intelligent dialogue related to the works we are studying in class. Respectful debate is always welcome.
T.S. Eliot's poem is a very interesting one that claims that even the things that we learn and the sings that we say are meaningless and serve no purpose. The poem reads, "We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men". Which seems to say that despite all the things that we can stuff inside our heads that we see as knowledge, in the end it is just as useless as the straw stuffed inside a scarecrow. My question is what does Eliot mean when he says "With direct eyes, to deaths other kingdom".
ReplyDeleteYeahhh this was a weird one. I wish I could answer Travis' question but I feel the same way. except about practically every line of this poem. I really liked the "Mistah Kurtz- he dead" line. Not because of who the guy was or how it was relevant (sorry Dr. C) but merely because it's funny. I got the whole scare crow part, it made me happy during the discussion to get something right. In part IV I am curious what Eliot is referring to when he says broken jaw of our lost kingdom. I don't understand a great deal of the language in all of his poems. Part V and the end part are meant to be sung. It's to the tune of the song played in jack-n-the-boxs. The last verse of the song it rather glum though. The world will end not with a bang but with a whimper. Whimpering always makes me thing of small children or animals in pain. I assume he was going for that effect.
ReplyDeleteI think that when Eliot talks about not being any nearer to death's dream kingdom he is talking about a form of heaven. I think he wants to find meaning to his life before he dies and he is worried about running out of time. The rest of the poem just gives analogies about what it is like to not find yourself and feel hollow. Eliot says that the voices are in the wind's singing more distant and more solemn than a fading star. I think Eliot is talking about how you feel distant from everything meaningful when you don't know who you are and what to appreciate in that sentence.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Travis said about this poem. We can know and learn so much and then pass it on, but in the end it serves no purpose and means nothing. I also think that the same goes for people's personalities and actions. I think this can be shown in the first stanza when the men are described as "paralyzed force" and "gesture without motion". People can know many things and do many things but ultimately nothing can come from that. We are just hollow men filled with pointless information and feelings, like straw in a scarecrow. What i want to know is why these things are insignificant? Does eliot believe that there is not really any point in life and that learning things and experiencing things doesn't matter because nothing awaits us after we die?
ReplyDeleteI think that TS Eliot is talking about the importance of men in Part I. He says that men are "quiet and meaningless." Maybe he thinks that if someone has something to say, then they need to be bold and announce their ideas. When he wrote the "Shape without form..." stanza, I think that he was saying that men are not that important. We are able to learn a little bit about others by seeing their shape, but we cannot reach any conclusions because they are formless. My question is, if men are not important, then why does Eliot want them to be remembered?
ReplyDeleteJake, how is Elliot talking about the importance of men in part I if he calls them "meaningless"? Do you mean that men's voices are quiet and meaningless, because I think that is what Elliot was saying. I agree that he wants men to be bold and announce their ideas, but I also think that he wants mento come up with better ideas. Not only does he call their ideas quiet, but also meaningless, therefore they should be spoken more boldly , but only if they have a meaning. My question is, are all men's ideas meaningless, or just some men?
ReplyDeleteI also do not understand how it is talking about the importance of man. I do not think that is what Eliot was getting at. I do believe that this is refferring the emptiness of man, and how we are empty, cold, and depressed. I also find it interseting that he can not finish his words at the end of the poem, this shows that they are not able to take refuge in communication.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Maddy. He is not taking refuge in communication. He points out how empty we are. I believe people recognize that they are empty and thus we try to look for something to make us feel complete. We want to feel something. I think poem goes hand in hand with "Journey of the Magi." I feel like that poem is a response to this. When we feel empty, we go and find something that will make us complete. Through finding Christ, we are complete.
ReplyDeleteAlex, I don't really think that these two poems can go together the same way you think they can. You suggested that Journey of the Magi is a response - a hopeful response - to The Hollow Men. The Hollow Men is about men who cannot find meaning and are "hollow." The Journey of the Magi is a poem about men who search for meaning, and though events with meaning surround them, they do not know the significance of the events because the events are yet to come. The Journey of the Magi is not a response to The Hollow Men, but they are connected. Both of these poems follow a similar pattern. Both are about the meaninglessness of life. Eliot writes both of these poems as reflections of man. We search for meaning, but we are hollow and cannot see what the future holds. The future is hopeless, rather than hopeful. It is hard for us, as Christians, to see the world the same way that Eliot is showing it to us. To us, Christ's birth was a joyous occasion filled with meaning. It is hard for us to look at the event from Eliot’s perspective and see that there is no meaning in it. But that’s what he does. So, all this to say, I don't think that these two Eliot poems are connected in the way you suggested - despair and then redemption - but they are connected in theme, as are many of T. S. Eliot's other works - life is meaningless.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of this poem, Eliot references Mr. Kurtz from "Heart of Darkness". Kurtz, in the novel, basically was in charge of a bunch of slaves; he had heads on stakes surrounding his hut. Basically, it seems that Eliot sarcastically says "a penny for the old guy" because he did such a great job at making those slaves feel like hollow men, when in fact he was the hollow man with no soul or heart towards the slaves. He treated them as far less than human. The first few stanzas of "The Hollow Men" seem to refer to how the slaves are not remembered by the white men; they are simply empty bodies that pass along and make no difference once they're dead, from Kurtz' perspective.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Travis on this one: the poem is saying that we are like shells: hollow. We don’t have substance to us, and we are filled by the world. “Shape without form, shade without color.” The “hollow men” are timid and have no courage to do anything. In the end, the poem says “For thine is the kingdom,” but this falls apart into nonsense phrases and eventually, the poem ends with “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”
ReplyDeleteI do not understand why he compares us to scarecrows. Is he saying that we are just hollow on the inside and we have the false appearance of anything otherwise? How can one be shape without form., shade without color? Is he trying to say that it does not matter what our body consists of but what we do? To a bird, it doesn't matter if the scarecrow is a real man or not. It is still scared regardless of what's really on the inside. Are we supposed to be judged by our actions and not our appearances?
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