The Hollow Men By T.S Elliot

“That is the way the world ends/ not with a bang but with a whimper.” This is the ending of T.S Elliot’s poem, The Hollow Men. It’s funny. This poem only goes out with a whimper in the very literal sense that it is what’s written on the page. This poem goes out with a bang because of the feelings of overwhelming sadness it leaves behind, and that is what makes this line all the more depressing. It is the world that is going out with a whimper, a small sound of complaint not to be remembered or given any credence, and you realize that the world will go out like this because you will go out like this.

When you begin reading this poem you read about the Hollow Men- a group of people entirely separate from your existence. It makes you sad that anyone would have to live in such a pitiable state, but there it is. It is not until section five that you really begin to see some kinship in the words so carefully recorded. “Here we go round the prickly pear/ Prickly pear prickly pear/ Here we go round the prickly pear/ At five o’clock in the morning.” That part reads like a children’s song- there’s an easy sort of rhythm to it that brings one back to playing Double Dutch in the schoolyard at recess and singing songs with such an easy, repetitive beat.

The next stanzas in the poem are about the In-Between, and because you can’t really help it... you try to put these next few lines into that simple rhythm of the Prickly Pear song you just read- but you can’t. When you take a recess between classes to eat your lunch and play Double Dutch with your friends, the songs you sing are different from the ones that would come out of your mouth at any other time of day. Especially when talking about recess to your mom when you get home. It’s kind of like getting somebody to do your homework- you talk to them during designated times and at designated places and that is it.

The four stanzas before the end of the poem have a weird ethereal quality to them- you can kind of grasp them but when you do you quickly realize there wasn’t much to hold on to in the first place. It reminds me of how your thoughts get when you are about to fall asleep. You’re lying there, telling yourself some sort of story to wind your mind down, and suddenly you realize that you’ve been thinking the same sentence for a while now because try as you might you can’t find the words that come next. All you can see is this shadowy hole. You know that if you reach into the hole, you’ll be able to pull your story out, but you’re a little too afraid of what else might be inside that hole. So, you don’t reach in and you fall asleep instead.

Going back to the beginning of the poem, under the title The Hollow Men is a little dedication of sorts written in italics (like the prickly pear song, or the stanza about how the world will go out). It says, “A penny for the Old Guy”. It was this small line that led me to read the poem as if it was the story of someone whose old age had almost taken them away. It’s one thing to think about a person of thirty being hollowed out like a dessert and having to walk around with no eyes, but it’s quite another to think of this Hollow Man as old and gray and dying. It makes the reader feel less guilty for one thing- when it’s a person in the prime of their life whose soul and body have been emptied, most people will feel they should do something to help the Hollow Man achieve his dreams. But, when the empty shell of a person happens to be old and dying anyway, people will focus on making them as comfortable as possible, but they know in the end there’s nothing they can do to fix the old man’s condition.

So, if this poem was written about the end of someone’s life- it’s still depressing as heck. But, its not depressing in a suicidal kind of way anymore. It’s depressing in a more lamenting way, a regretful way. This particular Old Guy obviously hates his condition (whether he’s actually blind or just really old and cantankerous I’m not really sure) and he feels badly for himself and anyone else in his predicament. At the beginning of the poem he says, “We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/” calling out attention the fact that there are others like him who “whisper together” and “Are quiet and meaningless.” He says these things in a way that is almost mean but is mostly resigned. He knows his fate and is only begrudged because he’s taken his time and turned into a Hollow Man while waiting. He even asks “Those who have crossed/ … to death’s other Kingdom'' to remember himself and the others, not as lost souls but as Hollow Men.

It is because of this request that I believe that this Old Guy is somewhat proud of his decrepit old age. He made it. It was hard and he kind of regrets it now, but he made it. He did not have to stop for death, he made it to the age where death had to stop for him- and I don’t think there’s a way to slice that where it’s not something of an accomplishment. In the second stanza of section three, he might be dead or alive at this point, but either way he’s getting ready to fall asleep by saying his prayers “to a broken stone.” Sections three and four tell us that “death’s other kingdom” requires you to walk alone, not really knowing where you are, where you’re going, but that the other kingdom does promise you the hope of knowing at some point.

This brings us back to the end again. To the old man remembering schoolyard rhymes before dipping his foot into the In-Between and filling his brain with half-thoughts. Getting closer and closer to the shadow that finds itself in the corners between action and emotion, creation and response, between reality and conception. The shadows are there to prove that maybe death’s other kingdom is the Old Guy’s kingdom too, and that maybe his life was long so that he could earn his place of stewardship by death’s side.

These last few stanzas’ have their fourth lines written in Italics, and this leads me to believe that something other than the Old Guy had a hand in creating these thoughts. The Italics becomes more and more present as the poem comes to a close and so I wonder if the Old Guy’s final act of bravery, perhaps the only act of bravery one can perform when their old and dying, and the world as they know it is going out, was to in fact reach into that hole that sleep was creating in his brain and pull out whatever thoughts he could- even if they weren’t his.

The Old Guy is the only thing in this poem. There really is no plot- other than this man’s thoughts and feelings. This emphasis on character is a common method of writing in the Modern period, and honestly, it’s usually not my favorite. I’m not a huge fan of running the gauntlet inside someone else’s head, but I found this poem really intriguing and fun to read. This poem puts you into the shoes of the Old Guy and allows for some true empathy to happen between the Hollow Man and the reader.

It's kind of amazing that the Modernists started doing this, sharing a character’s world with their reader, and doing it so well. This was the start of really well-rounded characters in stories and in turn it led people to begin to examine their lives and desire a more well-rounded existence for themselves. The Old Guy is regretful, satisfied, lamenting, courageous, self-aware, bitter, and a thousand other things. He’s human and we can tell. Because of this, we don’t have to know someone old and dying. We know the Old Guy.