Futility of Life Exposed in T.S. Eliots The Hollow Men...

Futility of Life Exposed in T.S. Eliots The Hollow Men The Hollow Men, by T.S Eliot, is a reflection on the emptiness, futility and misery of modern life. It is also a reflection on the problems involved in human communication, and on the meaning (or lack of it) to life. Eliot uses religious and desert symbolism, biblical and literary allusions, repetition, parody and deliberately sparse, controlled language to convey the themes of the poem. The poem opens with two epigraphs - MISTAH KURTZ - HE DEAD and A penny for the Old Guy. The first epigraph refers to a character called Mr Kurtz from Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness. This character turned to evil in the jungle and died as a violent cannibal. The phrase†¦show more content†¦Firstly, these men, who are recognised as violent, outlandish or immoral, have achieved something that we hollow men have not - they have lived. They are not a paralysed force such as we are, they have not gestured without motion. They have done something, they have communicated their ideas, they have not conformed to the rules of society, they have not hidden behind the shadow that separates our minds from our words or actions. Secondly, the epigraphs introduce two images which recur during the poem. The reference to Mr Kurtz creates an image of primitive existence in the readers mind, whilst the reference to Guy Fawkes, creates (as mentioned above), the image of a stuffed, scarecrow like figure. In the first stanza, Eliot describes what the human race has become. We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Learning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dry voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless These hollow men are afflicted with a stuffed language, and cannot properly communicate with each other - their voices are mediocre and empty. This is perceived by Eliot to be even worse than communicating with violence, such as Mr Kurtz and Guy Fawkes did. Eliots witty 1918 truncation of an Arnoldian phrase prefigures the Hollow Mens predicament; Clive Bell, lingering between two