Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Eyes
Voices
Deaths other kingdom
Another kind of repetition is carried out through
negation
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams (II)
These do not appear (II)
Let me be no nearer (II)
No nearer (II)
Not that final meeting (II)
The eyes are not here,
There are no eyes here (IV)
Eliot uses negation as an expression of sorrow
and guilt, trying to avoid the inevitability of
death
Part V and its repetitions
A childrens song based on repetition:
Here we go round the prickly pear,
Prickly pear, prickly pear.
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five oclock in the morning.
The familiar mulberry tree is replaced with prickly pear
(cactus) infertility dance primitive chant
Use of truncated verses as if the reader were to complete
the gaps infertility/emptiness:
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
Everything in this poem is circular, repetitive and absurd
Symbols
Hollow men, stuffed men leaning together, headpiece filled with
straw (I) standing not walking- corpses, immobile dying bodies
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises:
Rats coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field (II) inanimate, immobile, anthropomorphic figure filled
with straw (a scarecrow)
Voices and eyes disembodied; they appear as independent,
supernatural concepts apart from the hollow mens existence
The voices are quiet and meaningless
We do not know who the eyes belong to (first, they are source of
fear, then a source of hope, etc.)
The realm of the Hollow Men (deaths other kingdom)
At five oclock in the morning. (IV) dancing is a rite of resurrection
around prickly pear (abortion/interruption of life)
Interpretation: part I
Hollow/stuffed men/headpiece filled with straw = the hollow men
are filled with absurd, nonsense ideas and thought, causing them to
be empty and futile
Leaning together = submission or even surrender
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together,
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar. = their voices have no sense, have no effect =
meaninglessness
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion = being distinguished by
external configuration, not content/material = vanity/futility +
paralysis of movement, stasis
We are like the Old Guy, effigies filled with straw
Interpretation: part 2
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams = disembodied, yet a
source of fear
Thanks to the metaphor (There, the eyes are sunlight on a
broken column) we find out that the eyes do indeed
appear, but in an indirect way, just as a reflection of
themselves. Whats more, the sunlight a symbol of
greatness- and the broken column a symbol of ancient
glory- seem to have a connection with the description of
the voices meaninglessness in Part I. The sunlight doesnt
produce an effect on the broken column, it just bounces
off it, its a paralyzed force. The adjective broken even
emphasises the distortion of the reflected light.
Another element of deaths dream kingdom (There, is a tree
swinging). Why swinging? The verb means to move freely to and fro
when hanging from a support. Now it makes sense if we link it to
the new metaphor about the voices (lines 25-28): And voices are in
the winds singing more distant and more solemn than a fading star.
The winds singing -its movements- is like the trees swinging, they
dont have a particular direction, theyre meaningless. Furthermore,
if the voices are whispers and are distant within the winds singing,
they become unfortunately inaudible. And not only that,
theyre more distant and more solemn than a fading star.
Something solemn is serious and has an established form or
ceremony, whereas a fading star is a decaying, dying element,
because the light it produces is weak and stars are so far away that
their light is the only thing we can perceive from them. Therefore,
in deaths dream kingdom the voices like the tree- are even more
meaningless and quieter than they were before, and whats worse,
theyre barely inaudible, meaning that the hollow mens prayers are
useless -even unnecessary- in that place.
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises:
(= chosen on purpose, yet to be invisible)
Rats coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
(= scarecrow/hollow/stuffed men)
Interpretation: part III (setting)
This is the dead land,
This is the cactus land.
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead mans hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
A need of giving love, a desire which cannot be
accomplished because of the physical and
spiritual devastation of the place