Sense Of Loss In The Hollow Men example essay topic

I want an essay because i really suck at writing my own, as seen in this example... actually i'll give you someone else's notes... THANX TIM if you ever read this, but i couldn't think of anything else to put here... Loss is a very prominent subject matter in the poetry of T.S. Eliot and his contemporizes. These writers, such as Yeats and Woolf e, later grouped as modernists, were reacting to the social upheaval of their times, with the industrial revolution, the First World War and technological advancement affecting their writing. Some of these writers, such as Eliot, reacted negatively, expressing in their works what they felt society had lost as a result of this modernisation and social change. 'In the Hollow Men,' Eliot represents society's loss of purpose and spirituality.

He portrays this sense of loss through his use of both structure and content. In the Hollow men, the fragmented structure of the poem creates a sense of loss. Eliot, in his unconventional style, fragments sentences and in so doing, disrupts them. An example of this is on lines 5-8 "Our dried voices, when / we whisper together / are as quiet and meaningless / as wind in dry grass". This fragmentation of sentences portrays a loss of structure and purpose that these "hollow" men experience as a result of their lack of spirituality, which according to Eliot, gave life purpose and meaning. Even the Lords prayer, when attempted in the fifth stanza is fragmented and the direction of the prayer is lost as it dissipates into smaller and smaller pieces.

This fragmentation portrays what Eliot saw as the fragmentation of modern society, as people began to lose faith in both their governments and the church after the horrors of the First World War. Also, through the fragmentation of seemingly unrelated phrases, such as "paralysed force, gesture without motion; / those who have crossed" enforces the loss of purpose that the hollow men experience. Eliot's use of a steady rhythmic pattern and repetition, such as "we are the hollow men / we are the stuffed men" and the list-like effect of the repetition of "between" in the final stanza further emphasise the directionless monotony of the "hollow men's" existence, and their state of being between everything and actually being nothing. Eliot felt that this state of "in-between-ness" characterised modern society, with the previous sources of direction and purpose such as the Christian faith having lost their guidance over modern man. Eliot uses dry and barren imagery to describe society's loss of purpose and spirituality. Throughout the poem, there is a prevalence of dry and barren imagery.

Images such as "wind in dry grass,"our dry cellar,"this is the dead land, this is the cactus land,"in this hollow valley", provoke a sense of emptiness and the loss of life and action. Even the luscious mulberry of the children's nursery rhyme has decayed into a prickly pear. The barren wasteland that these images describe represents the barrenness and hollowness that Eliot saw in modern life. The dry image of "lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone" enforces the sense of loss of spirituality, showing the way man-kind's attention has been taken from the worship of life, love and beauty and instead been given to the worship of money and machinery. Thus, through his use of arid and hard imagery, Eliot presents the world as he saw it, barren, having lost the life and vibrancy of action, purpose and spirituality as a result of industrialism, capitalism and technology's dominance of the fragile beauty of nature. Several metaphors are utilized by Eliot in the creation of a sense of loss in the Hollow Men.

A cogent example is Eliot's comparison of modern man to a scarecrow. This metaphor, first presented in lines 2-4 and then revisited on lines 33, 34 portrays the loss of spirituality that Eliot saw as prevalent in man-kind. The "hollow men" have no action, they are merely "behaving as the wind behaves", and are only acted upon by outside forces. They have no fire of passion inside them, "their head pieces are filled with dry straw". In this respect, Eliot uses the metaphor of the scarecrow to describe the "shell-shocked" nature of modern society after the disruption of the First World War. Symbolism is a very powerful means by which Eliot portrays a sense of loss in the Hollow Men.

One example of this is the recurring symbol of eyes. In The Hollow Men, Eliot refers to the Christian saying "the eyes are the window to the soul", using the eyes to symbolise the soul, spirituality and ones connectedness with it. Thus by saying "eyes I dare not meet in dreams,"the eyes are not here, there are no eyes here" Eliot describes the sense of spiritual loss prevalent in modern society, and even suggests a remedy in religion by saying "sightless, unless the eyes reappear as the perpetual star, multifoliate rose". The perpetual star and multifoliate rose represent the salvation of religion as filling the void of these "hollow men's" loss. Another recurring symbol is the stars, which symbolise the hope of mankind.

Thus through images such as "more distant and solemn than a fading star,"Under the twinkling of a fading star,"In this valley of dying stars" Eliot presents the reader with a sense of loss of hope that he saw in the people around him. He then shows salvation through the "perpetual star", religion. Thus Eliot presents what he believes to be the state of modern man, lost in the aftermath of the First World War, without faith in Earthly institutions such as government, heavenly institutions such as the church, and even loss of faith in humankind through his use of symbolism. Allusion is used on a subtle level throughout the poem.

"The Hollow Men" is essentially an allusion to Dante's inferno, which influenced a lot of Eliot's early work. By alluding, in his description of modern man, to the blind people who are neither in heaven or hell, but simply "grope together and avoid speech on the banks of this tumid river", Eliot powerfully emphasises to the intellectual audience that he was writing for mans loss of direction and purpose as a result of their loss of spirituality. Modern man, according to Eliot, had lost many things as a result of the social upheaval of the First World War and recent technological advancements. He had lost direction, spirituality and a connection with his inner soul.

The loss of these things had created a vacuum, a void inside humankind, leaving man "hollow". This sense of loss is expressed subtly in the Hollow Men through both its structure and content. Tim.