Literature Week 6: T.S Eliot
Today during the tutorial we studies Virginia Woolf and her essay/lecture "A Room of One's Own" and T.S Eliot's "The Hollow Men". Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" was really difficult to read but i really loved the way she passionately wrote about the limitations of women in a world of men. Within this lecture i really enjoyed reading "The Hollow Men" by T.S Eliot, it was a very interesting poem, i felt like i was Alice in Wonderland, the poem was so 'out of this world'.
Lines i really liked from the poem:
"We are the hollow men
we are the stuffed men
leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!"
This is a section of the first stanza or part of the poem and it refers to the hollow men or the shallowness of people that they are like scarecrows, their heads filled with nothing but straws. Eliot is saying that there is only emptyness behind the thin skin of these 'Hollow men'.
"Shape without form, shade without colour,
paralysed force, gesture without motion"
This line really capture my attention, Eliot's use of poetic language and techniques! I Love it! "shape without form" how is it possible to have a shape without a form? a "paralysed force" force is all around us in whatever we do yet he says that it is paralysed? Eliot contradicts everything in this line as he is juxtaposing the elements of life. I think through this he is trying to say that the "Hollow men" are nothing, or bound to nothingness as "gesture without motion" or "shape without form" cannot coexist therefore i think that he is trying to say these men cannot coexist with the world.
"At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone."
It seems that these empty men are condemned to purgatory, "deaths other Kingdom" where it is a "dead land" and there is no hope for them. Although they are trembling with tenderness nothing can help them even though they try to pray or have hope the "lips that would kiss form prayer to broken stone". Lips are an essential for a person as they can talk, eat, and kiss yet, to these men even their lips that form prayers break the stones around them. They are useless, nothing.
"For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
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 is the last lines of the poem yet has so much meaning! The lines "For thine is Life is For thine is the" does not make sense, yet, as we discussed in the tutorial it seems as this is summing up the poem, just as these word may mean nothing, these men meant nothing, just hollow shells, like these meaningless words. The last bit of the poem seems like he taunting the men, that they would die, not with a bong, but quietly like nothing, as if they never existed.
Overall this poem was really interesting and i think it may become one of "Christine's favourite poems"!!! It almost had a very creepy vibe to it, like a nightmare or a scary story that someone would tell you at midnight! Yet, it was very deep and meaningful as it even used references to "The Heart of Darkness" and even the "Lords Prayer". Deep indeed!
