hollow men
If Edgar Allen Poe's "Mask of the Red Death" had been set anywhere other than in 1300's England, the story would have lost its theme. How would Poe have relayed the idea that you can not cheat death if the story was not set during the plague? In the same way, Eliot could not have set "The Hollow Men" any where other than in different kingdoms of death, and an English church. The hollow men are the people praying in the church. They are empty inside and therefore can not travel to any of death's kingdoms. The idea that the hollow men are the absence of life and will move on to other kingdoms can only be effectively shown through the different kingdoms and the people in them. Elliot uses the setting so that it correlates with the theme even before the first stanza starts. Eliot writes, "A penny for the Old Guy"(1). This sentence is important because it gives reference to a holiday in England that children make a game out of. In the same way parishioners don't treat church as something important. The reference is to the cry of English children soliciting money for fireworks to commemorate Guy Fawkes day, November 5; which commemorates the "gunpowder plot" of 1605 in which Guy Fawkes and other conspirators pla
Elliot, T.S. "The Hollow Men". Collected Poems 1909-1935. to being. "Between the conception And the creation" (V 11, 12) This is the essential irony of their impaired lives. The end comes by way of ironic completion as the nursery rhyme again takes up its repetitive round, and terminates with the line that characterizes the evasive excuse. They are the whimpers of fear with which the hollow men end, neither the bang of Guy Fawkes Day nor the "lost violent soul." The environment changes back to the church in the last part where the question of Christianity's ability to save the hollow men is raised. The nursery rhyme theme mocks the hope of empty men. In desire they "go round the prickly pear" (V 1) but are frustrated by the prickles. The poem now develops the frustration of impulse. At various levels, and in various aspects of life, there falls the frustrating shadow of fear, the essential shadow of this land. Yet the shadow is more than fear: it concentrates the valley of shadow into a shape of horror, almost a personification of its negative character. The passage from the Lord's Prayer relates the Shadow to religion, with irony in the attribution. The response about the length of life relates it to the burden of life. In the end the Lord's prayer again relates the Shadow to the Kingdom that is so hard to reach. This repetition follows the conflict of the series that produces life itself, frustrating the essence from descent ! nned to blow up both houses of Parliament. On this day, which celebrates the failure of the explosion, the likes of Fawkes are burned in effigy and mock explosions using fireworks are produced.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1343
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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