I
In a ten-line verse, the speakers claim to be empty yet full, evoking references to the straw men burned in effigy in England on Guy Fawkes Day (a holiday that commemorates the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy to blow up the British Parliament and King James 1st on November 5, 1605). Made of straw, these men are without depth and significance, like the grass in the breeze, or like the movement of rodents over debris in the basement. The next verse is a couplet in which numerous contradictory terms (such as the idea of being colorless, yet possessing a hue) are introduced. Notably, there is no concrete indication of what these paradoxes are referring to. In the following six-line stanza, references are made to those who have died and passed on to the afterlife. The speakers declare that the dead may think of them, and if they do, they think of them as empty yet full.
II
This section appears to be narrated by a singular speaker as opposed to the plural speakers in section I. In the first ten-line stanza, the speaker states that in his fantasies of the afterlife, there are eyes he cannot bring himself to look at and that are not present. But in the afterlife, those eyes are like the daylight and there is also a tree that moves. There are words in the breeze that are as somber as a dying star. In the next eight-line stanza, the speaker says he does not want to get any closer to the afterlife and wants to wear costumes to hide himself from it. He wants to be as elusive as the breeze. In the section’s final couplet, the speaker again notes that he wishes to avoid the ultimate assembly that will occur in the afterlife.
III
In this section, the narrator reverts to the plural voice, but the verses again refer largely to the land of death. In the first six-line stanza of the section, reference is made to that land as a desert. There are also stone statues there, elevated and worshiped by the dead. All of this takes place beneath a dying star. (Here, the reference to the dying star is repeated from the first stanza of section II). Then, in the second (seven-line) stanza, the speaker indicates that there is another afterlife, and that the previous stanza refers to it. Furthermore, in this second afterlife the dead awake without company, just when they are filled with affection, like mouths meant for kissing. Instead, those mouths beseech the crumbling statues.
IV
The speakers open the section with a five-line stanza that again refers to the eyes that are absent (this image is initially mentioned in the first stanza of section II). In fact the eyes are missing from a vale filled with fading stars. The vale is as empty as the stuffed men (indeed, the same words used to describe them are used to describe the gorge). The vale is also described as the broken jaw of vanished empires. In the following four-line stanza, this gorge is the final assembly place where the straw men feel their way as one. They do not speak and they come together on the shore of a swollen waterway. The section’s third stanza is comprised of seven lines. In it, the speakers state that without eyes, there is no sight. Should the eyes become present again, they will be an undying star, and a special type of rose representative of the church. This rose is also a reference to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. In Dante, the rose symbolizes heaven. For the speakers in Eliot’s poem, this rose is the only hope of the hollow men.
V
This section opens with a four-line italicized stanza of a nursery rhyme, an alteration of ‘‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.’’ The mulberry bush, however, is replaced by a cactus plant, again referencing the desert imagery initially introduced in the first stanza of section III. In the next five-line stanza, the speaker (or speakers, as this is unclear in the poem’s final section) says that a shadow lies in the space separating theory and practice, movement and deed. Between the stanzas an italicized quotation from the Lord’s Prayer is set flush with the right margin. The section’s third stanza is made up of five lines. Here the speaker states that the shadow falls in the space separating the idea and the creative act, the feeling and the reaction to it. An italicized line declaring that life is not short follows, again set flush with the right margin. In the following seven-line stanza, there are more descriptions of the shadow. It lies amidst the space between yearning and paroxysm, power and being, the core and the fall. The single line from the Lord’s Prayer is repeated. The section’s (and the poem’s) penultimate (next to last) stanza is three lines long. Each line is comprised of fragments from the three offset italicized lines that preceded it. The final stanza is four italicized lines. The first three are identical, and the speaker says that this is how the apocalypse will be. Then, in the final line, the speaker says that the apocalypse will not take place with a great crash but with little more than a quiet moan.
Source Credits:
Sara Constantakis (Editor), Poetry for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Poetry, T. S. Eliot, Volume 33, published by Gale-Cengage Learning, 2010