Sunday, October 3, 2010

The Hollow Men

V

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.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                     For Thine is the Kingdom

-T.S. Eliot

In this part of the poem the author is making the point about how disfunctional the human mind is. The author is envisioning the world as a wasteland; the prickly pear is a cactus showing a desolate world man exists in. No people can live or thrive in a desert, making the point that no people can live and thrive in the world now with sightles minds and bad judgement. The hollow mind of man can not thrive in humanity fully or in peace with God, "For Thine is the Kingdom". Eliot repeats the lords prayer several times after the one written above; repetition of song and prayer showing the cultural differences in the mind of hollow men, and the division within social hiearchy. The ironic thing is that truly the social instances barely matter in my mind because Eliot is making the point that we are hollow men so our social being is not significant anyways.

1 comment:

  1. Hmm. Interesting thought. I like this last section a lot. I just think his words are simple, but powerful.

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