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
" Humanity is in the Kingdom of death, not as "violent souls" but as empty effigies, "filled with straw", of this religious service. The hollow men would not be any nearer, any more direct, in this twilight kingdom. " They are only reflected through broken light and shadows, all is perceived indirectly. This inference could not be made if the environment that Eliot chose for "The Hollow Men" was not in England. In the end the Lord's prayer again relates the Shadow to the Kingdom that is so hard to reach. The idea of blindness and utter darkness is shown in the environment of the valley of dying stars. The hollow men are spared contact with other people because in this kingdom the voices are only traveling in the wind, "And the voices are in the wind's singing more distant and more solemn than a fading star" (II 7-10). "Direct eyes" symbolizes those who represent something positive in death. 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. Fortunately, "the eyes he dare not meet even in dreams" do not appear in "death's dream kingdom. And again the "fading star" establishes a sense of remoteness from reality. The passage from the Lord's Prayer relates the Shadow to religion, with irony in the attribution. " If "The Hollow Men" was not set in a church, then the poem would not show how worshipers of Christianity that are empty inside can not be saved. However, without the settings of "death's dream kingdoms" or the church, it would not be clear that the men are hollow inside and do not have the ability to move on after they die. The response about the length of life relates it to the burden of life.
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Acceptance Essays
