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 planned 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.
             The relation of this custom to the poem suggests another inference: as the children create a game of Guy Fawkes, so do we make a game out of religion. This inference could not be made if the environment that Eliot chose for "The Hollow Men" was not in England. Without the children playing the game because of the holiday, the association would not be made with making a game out of church.
             The first lines bring the title and theme into a critical relationship. Humanity is lik...