Question

the mood of the poem "The Hollow Men" can best be described as
a) dark and somber
b.) moving and hopeful
c.) violent and energetic

Answer 1

please help with the rest and I'll give you a medal for just answering!!

Answer 2

Can you post the poem?

Answer 3

B it think

Answer 4

Eliot is strongly feeling the uselessness of life. The motions are there and the components of life are in place but they lack the vigor that one craves.
"Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion; "

we desperately try to fill our lives with these meaningless accomplishments, which have no effect at all in death which is the final accomplishment of every life:

"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men"

Death's other kingdom is refering to Hell, while death's dream kingdom refers to Heaven, yet both references, he has a certain disdain for:

"Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer- "


"This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star. "
this part illustrates the live lived on earth as the land of the dead, since all who have died are buried here. Each headstone with it's own dead man. while the lives are continued in another place (under the twinkle of a fading star)

"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms"
this part could address the inordinate loss of spirituality in daily life (broken jaw of our lost kingdoms).

this section is the most beautiful. with the verses composed as such:

"Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow"

the desire and the spasm is a sexual reference
the potency and the existance,could be creation of life
the essence and the descent are birth and death
this shadow he refers to is his life. he associates himself with the shadow and all of humankind with the shadow.

and finally:
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. "
I like to think this is an allusion to the big bang theory. the idea that the world started with a bang in space and the universe was the debris. but how will it end?
the land of the dead, the lives of meaningless desperate acomplishments such a futile struggle of disappointing humankind ends not with a bang but a whimper.

this is just an outline. I hope this helps you to analyse the framework of the poem so that you can find even more meanings.

Answer 5

can i has medal hope this helped!

Answer 6

I think it's A but there were also some aspects of hope in it as well

Answer 7

i hope i can get a medal ! :)

Answer 8

Actually the poem is about Dante's inferno XD

Answer 9

Eliot wrote that he produced the title "The Hollow Men" by combining the titles of the romance "The Hollow Land" by William Morris with the poem "The Broken Men" by Rudyard Kipling:[3] but it is possible that this is one of Eliot's many constructed allusions, and that the title originates more transparently from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or from the character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness who is referred to as a "hollow sham" and "hollow at the core".

The two epigraphs to the poem, "Mistah Kurtz – he dead" and "A penny for the Old Guy", are allusions to Conrad's character and to Guy Fawkes, attempted arsonist of the English house of Parliament, and his straw-man effigy that is burned each year in the United Kingdom on Guy Fawkes Night.

Some critics read the poem as told from three perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death's kingdoms ("death's dream kingdom", "death's twilight kingdom", and "death's other kingdom"). Eliot describes how we, the living, will be seen by "Those who have crossed/With direct eyes [...] not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men." The image of eyes figures prominently in the poem, notably in one of Eliot's most famous lines "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams". Such eyes are also generally accepted to be in reference to Dante's Beatrice (see below).

The poet depicts figures "Gathered on this beach of the tumid river" – drawing considerable influence from Dante's third and fourth cantos of the Inferno which describes Limbo, the first circle of Hell – showing man in his inability to cross into Hell itself or to even beg redemption, unable to speak with God. Dancing "round the wingspanly pear," the figures worship false gods, recalling children and reflecting Eliot's interpretation of Western culture after World War I.

The final stanza may be the most quoted of all of Eliot's poetry:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This last line alludes to, amongst some talk of war, the actual end of the Gunpowder Plot mentioned at the beginning: not with its planned bang, but with Guy Fawkes's whimper, as he was caught, tortured and executed on the gallows.

Perhaps most revealing, though, is that when asked if he would write these lines again, Eliot responded with a 'no':

One reason is that while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone's mind. Another is that he is not sure the world will end with either. People whose houses were bombed have told him they don't remember hearing anything.[4]

Other significant references include the Lord's Prayer, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Conrad's An Outcast of the Islands ("Life is very long").

Answer 10

Well I read somewhere it was kind of inspired by it XD

Answer 11

You get the answer ?

Answer 12

1. b
2. a
3. d
4. b
5. a
6. c
7. a
8. d
9. a
10. d
11. c
12. a
13. c
14. a
15. a
16. b
17. c
18. c
19. a

Answer 13

thanks!! 100%

Answer 14

what are those answers to ? @Brandymariexoxo

Answer 15

@Brandymariexoxo can you help me with chapter 5 lesson 16? please