Analysis of "The Hollow Men", by T.S. Elliot.

In "The Hollow Men" there is a conflict between an intense longing for a state of edenic purity and the contradictory search for a more lasting form of order through denial and alienation. It can be observed that "The Hollow Men" expresses the depths of Eliot's despair, but the poet in a sense chooses despair as the only acceptable alternative to the false existence of the unthinking inhabitants of the waste land. The despair of "…showed first 75 words of 583 total…

…showed last 75 words of 583 total…and cries "By the waters of Leman,"(7) then on the shore "with the arid plain behind me." (7) The persona of The Hollow Men has arrived, intellectually and physically, at the limit of one world only to find that its ''deliberate disguises" (5) hide a limited lack of possibility: between capacity and existence "Falls the Shadow." (5) (5) The Hollow Men, T.S.Eliot, (6) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S.Eliot. (7) The Wasteland, T.S.Eliot