hallow men by t.s. eliot

Title : The Hollow Men : The Meaning and The Theme

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If there were water we should stop and drink

Among the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountains mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit ( The Waste Land , 5 . What The Thunder Said , lines 335-339

Like the poem The Waste Land , The Hollow Men also grew out of little

bits and pieces of fragments that T .S .Eliot had written over a period of time . The final version was published in 1925 , but much before that this poem had many versions . In composing the poem he finished the last stages of the mental process that started in The Waste Land . In this poem too Eliot seems to have added the epigraphs to unify the whole process and give it a structured narrative and historical framework Like his previous work this poem also is composed of sequence of fragments , the thematic and stylistic links have to be developed by the readers themselves

The theme of The Hollow Men cannot be summarized into a few words or images . The integration and transformation of adolescent feelings of disillusionment with romantic love into a greater view of life can be said to be the theme of the poem . The inner life of human beings and its transition from fleshly human love to divine love has always been the themes...