The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot: Summary

The Hollow Men is a soliloquy by one of the hollow men bewailing their lot in death's kingdom from which they cannot cross to death's other kingdom because of spiritual impotence. The four major sources of the content of The Hollow Men are: the Gun Powder Plot; Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, particular the successful conspiracy against Caesar; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; and Dante's Divine Comedy.


T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

The hollow men wait for the final destruction because between now and then there is only an endless series of birth, death, and rebirth which is inescapable and which is, in itself, a waste land not only because it is inevitable, but because it offers no salvation from the wheel on which they turn. The eyes and the rose may well be symbols like the Holy Grail; a salvation sought but unattainable. The hollow men, like the knights of the Grail legends, quest for salvation, but because they are blind, spiritually and physically, they cannot find what they seek. They are not even pure enough to pass those first initiation rites indicated in The Waste Land.

The Hollow Men poem begins with two epigraphs; one is from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, 'Mistah Kurts-he dead' and the other is 'A penny for the old Guy' which is an expression by school children to buy firecrackers to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. On this day straw effigies are burnt.

The five sections of the poem are narrated by a Hollow Man. In the first part of the poem, a group of hollow men are shown leaning on each other like the scarecrows. Everything about their characteristics is absolutely dry and dull. Their voices are dry, bodies are shapeless, and shades are colorless and are as dry as the grass in the wind. Their life is projected as absurd and meaningless life. They want to raise a voice, but are timid and cannot even have access to the hell. They are only stuffed as hollow.

In the second part of the poem, one of the hollow men is found feeling afraid of looking at the people who made it to "death's dream kingdom" which may be either hell or heaven. All the hollow men are living in a world full of broken symbols and images.

The setting is barren and brown, filled with cactus and stones in the third section of the poem. The hollow men cannot even kiss someone if they desire to. They only can say prayers to the broken stones. In the section four, the hollow men of section two, goes on describing his vacant, desolate environment. He focuses on depicting that they have no eyes, and are afraid to look at or to be looked at. 

The final section initiates with a nursery rhyme "Here we go round the mulberry bush," except instead of a mulberry bush the kiddies are circling a prickly pear cactus. The speaker states how a "shadow" has paralyzed all of their activities to act, create, respond, or even exist. He tries quoting expressions that begin "Life is very long" and "For Thine is the Kingdom," but these lines break off into fragments. In the final lines, the "Mulberry Bush" song turns into a song about the end of the world. The expectation of the world to end may be with a huge, bright explosion, but for the Hollow Men, the world ends with a sad and quiet "whimper".

Cite this Page!

Shrestha, Roma. "The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot: Summary." BachelorandMaster, 7 Sep. 2017, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-hollow-men-summary.html.