In your response, include analysis of ‘The Hollow Men’ and ONE other Eliot poem you have studied.
T.S. Eliot conveys the deteriorating state of humanity in the beginning of the twentieth century in the poems The Hollow Men and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Events, such as World War I, from the early twentieth century have influenced Eliot to express the superficiality and materialistic desire for wealth in modern society. The changing modern world with fallen morals and events such as the suffragette movement that brought a greater degree of freedom for women, have influenced Eliot to write about a breakdown in communication and society and its movement away from religion. Eliot uses a range of techniques such as metaphors and juxtaposition in the poems, The Hollow Men and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to convey the deteriorating state of humanity.
The deteriorating state of humanity is conveyed in the poem, The Hollow Men. In the beginning of The Hollow Men, Juxtaposition is used in ‘We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men’. The comparison of ‘hollow’ and ‘stuffed’ creates a feeling of unease for the reader. The inclusive pronouns are not personal and show that the hollow men are a society or group of number of people. The hollow men and the stuffed men represent the deteriorating state of humanity as people become more concerned about materialistic wealth and superficiality. Society has become hollow like the hollow men. In the second part of the poem, the use of high modality and synecdoche in ‘Eyes I dare not meet in dreams/ In death’s dream kingdom’. The eyes represent the heavenly souls that the hollow men are frightened of. The heavenly souls represent truth and the hollow men, who are cowardly, are afraid of confronting truth and reality. The deteriorating state of humanity is conveyed through the cowardice of the hollow men as people in the modern