![]() ![]() Next Section Quotes and Analysis Previous Section Glossary Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Goldman, Rebecca. Prayers are directed to a broken stone the vision of the Christian “perpetual star, Multifoliate rose” becomes “The hope only/Of empty men.” The final word, whimper, describes a sound, expressing the paradox of praying for salvation without enough faith to form a word. The poem intensifies with expressions of religious desire, and a simultaneous opposing resurgence of despair. Alas Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar. Then, there’s a contrast between the arid desert, the “dead land” of faithlessness, and the dream state in sleep, where the narrator has access to a distant, fading world of faith, represented by the figures of the wind singing, the tree swinging, and the fading star. We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. First, there’s the contrast between the Hollow Men themselves, who are paralyzed by amorality, and those who have crossed the river into the afterlife with “direct eyes,” representing faith and moral clarity. Faithįaith is explored in "The Hollow Men" through contrasts. The poem ends with the world ending, another failure, and it ends poorly, in the embarrassing sound of a whimper. ![]() ![]() The ritual of reciting poetry fails language itself fragments and fails. Failure is also something " The Hollow Men" demonstrates poetically: the syntax breaks up and the voices in the poem, become unable to complete a prayer. He also explores it under other subthemes: paralysis, or a failure of will impotence, or a failure to procreate malaise, or a failure of imagination and amorality, or a failure of faith. Failure is a major theme in " The Hollow Men." Eliot collects examples of failure in the figures of Kurtz and Fawkes, who both failed at living an anarchic life. ![]()
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