“Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men” An it took another six lines for Mr. Elliot to say “you have to be a rapist to understand a rapist” (one may substitute “rapist” with what one desires). The Hollow Men is not necessarily about a journey into Inferno, Purgatorio, or Paradisio, but it definitely centers around the evil figures of the ages-- this much is obvious from the allusions to Kurtz, who stands as a living testament to the fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is now not matter of understanding the rapist or the substitute, but that of understanding without being. Now the contradiction-look-a-likes stated previously seem to offer some sense…it is as if Elliot acknowledges that the singular clear-cut geometric laws of the universe can not always be achieved…as if you can not always be the rapist, even when there is a must to understand that very violator of moral ambitions.
“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are” That tone of the neglect to face it and stare it down while it comes steaming down at you is indeed a dare to be made, to be cast, and to be lost. If defiance is what has constituted these hallow men, then why not defy the dreams? Are the hollow men only men in the masses or mere whiskers when alone? Thin strands twine to cast hawsers. Yet the “it” is still steaming on, its there, yet you can’t acknowledge it, for the neglect to face, or avoiding the prospect of facing, will lead to a whole new level of avoiding…avoiding the medical insurance bills that “it” steams right through you with a shower of blood and gore. Yet are the eyes only avoided on a subconscious level such as that subliminal acknowledgment of the biased will to choose? How about in reality, or is it for the hallow men a reality a subliminal dwelling? “Rhetorics” should be made into a whole new field of philosophies…after all, the greatest of all philosophers are found in chat rooms or Yahoo buddy profiles. If the eyes are dared to be met outside of dreams (which can also be their very own sense of reality; different circumstance; different time) then the multiple personality theme I took to heart as a naïve literal defect of my own analysis, rings the shackles once again…inside of reality, one being, outside of reality, another. “Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star” Appears to be a reflection of what a casual walk may lead the speaker to…a park with sunlight giving shape to dust, so that WE CAN SEE THEM, or at the very least, the outline…swinging trees…floating voices…fading stars. This laid back “chill out” period seems to be a direct assault against a predicate of a pungent scene to come full of obscenities…which is a basic assumption considering there are no such things as cliff hangers in many “modern” literary pieces for we’ve been through so many, we know they’re there.
“Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field”
Bravo! Assumptions at times do hold value at times for wanna-be gypsy fortune tellers we pseudo analyzers of literary works adhere to. That eye of dreams brought one straw along the door to death. Yet the straw stumbled in the dream, veering off of any eye that introspected the nudity of the straw. And here comes a stage in which to protect the nudity, a choice of free-will (how ironic) transposes to now adopting exchanging personalities, not just evolving into them. Out in the open, with rat coats, cow coats, cat coats, dog coats…yet since when an eye saw the flesh underneath the hair of the cow with the exception of stripping it off…never. It is a nook for safety…to crawl into when that eye looms and the nudity of oneself, not meant to be violated, is unzipped before the eye.
“Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –“ This signals the wind going through the dry fields as mentioned above and entirely beats the purpose of explicating this poem chunk by chunk when there are many allusions within the text itself…references running about all over the place. The wind as mentioned earlier, was foreshadowing a raspy future of sorts, and as for “no nearer” it can possibly symbolize as then again, the denial in facing it, even closer.
“Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom” The final meeting refers to as death as an obligatory object…one that one’s own actions place it as. At best, another version of obligatory death can be that of leaning towards the good or the bad…not for being part of the both, nor retaining anything in the middle. Yet this translation doesn’t not correlate with the multiple personalities as stated somewhere above…making this the second case against any form of two-faces, making it a strong enough of a resolve to prove me wrong.
“This is the dead land
This is cactus land” Death can be perceived by many as in many forms…either hostile, lurking in a grave, limp, evil, or at times even following a few “yo’ mama” insults. Yet in every case, death has this negative tinge to it, as if it were a loss in hope, a loss in substance, or just a simple loss altogether. If it is a loss, then death signifies a permanent loss, for it the word “death” is this extremity with an impact shared with extremes…extremely vital. But when one arises from death, perhaps from a resurrection, it seems as if one has changed to another extremity as well. However, linking metaphors after one another doesn’t quite clearly point out what was going through Elliot’s brain in 1925 or perhaps even prior to that, yet the lack of “the” in the second line caught my fancy. It is as if Elliot meant to pronounce death as ruling over the existence of the cactus which needs the water of the surrounding land to exist. If death overcompensates for the water by seizing total control, the land is not only dead, but those that survive on it. Total power brings harsh realities.
“Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone” Stone images can quite possibly represent tomb stones with the inscriptions of “rest in pieces.” Seemingly so, the hollow men acknowledge that death has been accomplished. As per my confusion in the first part, is this what the hollow men tried to accomplish all along, death? In literature glinting objects beyond reach usually signifies hope, or something along the lines of a positive (for a change). A fading star is the fading away of that positive beacon…the fading away of hope? It doesn’t not necessarily mean that if you are dead, you have lost. The past tense of “that would” attaches itself to a memory of sorts, like reminiscing on the days before death…from the prayers that they accomplished to the ultimate tombstone they accomplished alas…it is as if that all we do, every action, builds to that very clause of death and the mentality of either accepting it or fighting it. As for fighting it, no one has accomplished that just yet, perhaps due to a lack of enough free-will to go beyond the restraints of humanity?
“The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms” If one has just to build for the ultimate death, then why take negative tone of voice. It can very well be possible that it is the environment is negative in itself, not necessarily the perception of the speaker. As per the eyes commenting on the nudity of the hollow men, and its capability to seek right through, there are none in this final destination only achieved through the transport of death. Yet how is it death if one retains the conscience and the only mere loss is that of the perseverance of a physical being. But now I speak of the view that has been hammered into me, that heaven, or hell, can be achieved, yet you will remember all, but recall none (some sort of subliminal mystery to account for). More dying stars and negated kingdoms…they lost hope, and hope lost them in an account of meeting death through resistance…it just laid a clean-cut uppercut to the resistors, not anymore gracefully than Rocky himself. “In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river” This a stark change in reality from the hollow men mingling about and claiming that nothing of noting the effort, was achieved, yet if the actions were to lead to death, well, there you go, your accomplishment stand staring right at you. It is as if you do not change after the resurrection, but after death itself in that spot of determination of whom will follow whom for now there seems to be nothing to even waste the effort….as if they have no purpose left.
“Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men” Now these men prance about without the mockery of their stark nudity, yet they do contemplate if that the eye they were so used to before death would reappear. The next five lines following from the perpetual star reaffirm my suspicions of a changed persona after death. The hollow men had grown so used to the eye, the loss of hope and purpose made them immune to the subjected mockery. All in all, this seems like they invite the eye, the threat, back again to keep their minds occupied, perhaps even entertained? The only hope for hollow men, now empty perhaps now they lack all substantiality, even the hollow straw for there is no purpose left to broach, is the eye to now commentate on their lack of anything, as if they were now mocking the eye. “Hey eye! You laughed at us naked, now we got nothing worthy to see, and you’re stuck here caught staring at us like the king’s of perverts after a Peeping Tom!”
“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” Prickly pears seem to suggest bumps in the road to sweetness (considering the pear is sweet which it doesn’t seem to be for it were ripe, then why lay waste to prickles?)…fallacies in the road to truth (the only opposite I could muster up for a fallacy as parallel to botches of no sweet to sweetness). And they revolve endlessly around them…revolving around my draft of fallacies perhaps?
“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom” This is parallel to the notion that an artist loses so much as the image progresses through the mind, to the nerves, through the hand, to the fingers, and then eventually the paper. That shadow of lacking. One loses so much between too destinations, not just merely being bored. And that loss is what Elliot associates with a kingdom. Wasn’t it the kingdom that got Rocky’s uppercut straight to the jaw? Can that lack very well be a destiny for the kingdom, it lacks, and it gets screwed…with what, death perhaps? Yet now the hollow men seem to be rebels themselves, as if they awaited death with minimal resistance, when the kingdom which I strongly suspect they belonged to, offered all they had to fight back. This reminds me of the civilization/culture aspect of Invisible Man, for it is parallel to the concept that the culture may be responsible, yet the civilization does not have to accept the blame. But it can now work both ways. The civilization may take an action, but that does not necessarily mean that the culture has to follow suit.
“For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the”
That shadow is life. Let’s face it. This seems to be the proclamation the hollow men have to offer, that the shadow is what there it is worthy to live. And at the same time, that is strike two for my extremities of evil/good theory as well for the shadow rests right in between of the idea and the reality, between the potency and existence, and so forth. There might was well be no investment in resting in an extreme, but dwelling right in the middle like a herd of cows roaming in unison.
“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” Elliot drafts a rather appealing synopsis (in literary terms that is, not in reality) of death. Death will come, but what is with all the ruckus over it? It has come ever since the hollow men existed, and logic provides that in order not to be hollow men, we shall not strive towards death. Then what other imminent goal is left for us to provide effort for? Death will come to us all…the Mercedes, the mansions, the fat wallets, only come to a select few. Yet is wealth only what we can build after when that too is not carried through that public bus we call death? If it is imminent, then it rarely catches the hollow men by surprise. At the very least, they no what to suspect, as hollow as they are, surprise doesn’t cling on easily, for what substance is there to cling on to?