"The Hollow Men" (1925) is a poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognized to be concerned most with post-World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised: compare "Gerontion"), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, and, as some critics argue, Eliot's own failed marriage (Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot might have been having an affair with Bertrand Russell). The poem is divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines of which the last four are "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English".
Eliot wrote that he produced the title "The Hollow Men" by combining the titles of the romance "The Hollow Land" by William Morris with the poem "The Broken Men" by Rudyard Kipling: but it is possible that this is one of Eliot's many constructed allusions, and that the title originates more transparently from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or from the character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness who is referred to as a "hollow sham" and "hollow at the core".
The two epigraphs to the poem, "Mistah Kurtz – he dead" and "A penny for the Old Guy", are allusions to Conrad's character and to Guy Fawkes, attempted arsonist of the English house of Parliament, and his straw-man effigy that is burned each year in the United Kingdom on Guy Fawkes Night.
Some critics read the poem as told from three perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death's kingdoms ("death's dream kingdom", "death's twilight kingdom", and "death's other kingdom"). Eliot describes how we, the living, will be seen by "Those who have crossed/With direct eyes [...] not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men." The image of eyes figures prominently in the poem, notably in one of Eliot's most famous lines "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams". Such eyes are also generally accepted to be in reference to Dante's Beatrice (see below).
The poet depicts figures "Gathered on this beach of the tumid river" – drawing considerable influence from Dante's third and fourth cantos of the Inferno which describes Limbo, the first circle of Hell – showing man in his inability to cross into Hell itself or to even beg redemption, unable to speak with God. Dancing "round the prickly pear," the figures worship false gods, recalling children and reflecting Eliot's interpretation of Western culture after World War I.
The final stanza may be the most quoted of all of Eliot's poetry:
When asked if he would write these lines again, Eliot responded with a 'no':
One reason is that while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone's mind. Another is that he is not sure the world will end with either. People whose houses were bombed have told him they don't remember hearing anything.
Other significant references include the Lord's Prayer, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Conrad's An Outcast of the Islands ("Life is very long").
The poem was first published as now known on 23 November 1925, in Eliot's Poems: 1909–1925. Eliot was known to collect poems and fragments of poems to produce new works. This is clearest to see in his poems The Hollow Men and "Ash-Wednesday" where he incorporated previously published poems to become sections of a larger work. In the case of The Hollow Men four of the five sections of the poem were previously published:
"Poème", published in the Winter 1924 edition of Commerce (with a French translation), became Part I of The Hollow Men.
Doris's Dream Songs in the November 1924 issue of Chapbook had the three poems: "Eyes that last I saw in tears", "The wind sprang up at four o'clock", and "This is the dead land." The third poem became Part III of The Hollow Men.
Three Eliot poems appeared in the January 1925 issue of his Criterion magazine: "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams", "Eyes that I last saw in tears", and "The eyes are not here". The first poem became Part II of The Hollow Men and the third became Part IV.
Additionally, the March 1925 of Dial published The Hollow Men, I-III which was finally transformed to The Hollow Men Parts I, II, and IV in Poems: 1909–1925.
(Publication information from Gallup)
The Hollow Men has had a profound effect on the Anglo-American cultural lexicon—and by a relatively recent extension, world culture—since it was published in 1925. One source states that the last four lines of the poem are "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English." The sheer variety of references moves some of the questions concerning the poem's significance outside the traditional domain of literary criticism and into the much broader category of cultural studies. Examples of such influences include:
Film:
Eliot's poem was a strong influence on Francis Ford Coppola and the movie Apocalypse Now (1979), in which antagonist Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) is depicted reading parts of the poem aloud to his followers. Furthermore, the Complete Dossier DVD release of the film includes a 17-minute special feature of Kurtz reciting the poem in its entirety. The poem's epigraph, "Mistah Kurtz - he dead", is a quote from Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899), upon which the film is loosely based.
The final stanza is printed one line at a time at the beginning of the television production of Stephen King's The Stand (1994). The poem is also referenced in part by the character who feels responsible for the deadly "Captain Trips" virus being unleashed.
The trailer for the film Southland Tales (2006), directed by Richard Kelly, plays on the poem, stating: "This is the way the world ends, not with a whimper but with a bang." The film also quotes the line a number of times, mostly in voice-overs.
Beverly Weston discusses the line "Life is very long" at the beginning of August: Osage County.
In George Cukor's classic remake of A Star Is Born (1954), Jack Carson's film studio PR man Matt Libby refers to the death of James Mason's character Norman Maine dismissively, quoting: "This is the way the world ends: not with a bang - with a whimper."
Literature:
Stephen King's The Dark Tower series contains multiple references to "The Hollow Men" (as well as The Waste Land, most prominently The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991)).
King also makes reference to "The Hollow Men" in Pet Sematary (1983) with: "Or maybe someone who had escaped from Eliot's poem about the hollow men. I should have been a pair of ragged claws," the latter sentence of which is taken from Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915).
Nevil Shute's novel, On the Beach (1957), takes its name from the second stanza of Part IV of the poem and extracts from the poem, including the passage in which the novel's title appears, have been printed in the front papers of some editions of the book including the 1957 first US edition.
Kami Garcia's novel Beautiful Creatures contains this quote.
Karen Marie Moning's Fever Series novel, Shadowfever, contains quotes from this poem.
Multimedia:
Chris Marker created a 19-minute multimedia piece for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City titled Owls At Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men (2005), which was influenced by Eliot's poem.
In the videogame Shadow Man, the final boss, Legion, quotes "this is the way the world ends, Michael, not with a bang but with a whimper" just before giving the final blow to the protagonist in the bad ending.
The full poem is included in one of the flashbacks in Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
In the videogame Kairo, there is a quote from the poem on a wall in the "supersecret" location.
In the videogame Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the AI Colonel in the final speech quotes "And this is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper".
In the card game Cards Against Humanity, there is a black card citing the last three lines of the poem, but allowing players to replace "a whimper" with the text of a white card, for humorous effect.
Music:
Denis ApIvor wrote a work called The Hollow Men for baritone, male chorus and orchestra around 1939. It had only one performance, in 1950, under the conductor Constant Lambert, and produced by the BBC through the influence of Edward Clark.
The American new wave band Devo partially lifted from the poem for the chorus to the song "The Shadow" on their seventh album Total Devo (1988)
The song "Hollow Man" appears as the first track on the album Doppelgänger (1983) by the group Daniel Amos; the song is a paraphrase of Eliot's poem spoken over the music of "Ghost of the Heart" played backwards; "Ghost of the Heart" is the last song on the group's previous album ¡Alarma! (1981)
The Argentinian rock band Divididos has a song named after the poem ("Los hombres huecos") on their debut album 40 dibujos ahí en el piso (1988)
Members of the Minneapolis hiphop collective Doomtree have referenced this poem in a number of collective and individual songs, including the single "No Homeowners" on the collective's 2007 album False Hopes, ".38 Airweight" on 2015's All Hands, and in the single "Flash Paper" from member Sims's 2016 album More than Ever.
The last line of the poem is referenced in Amanda Palmer's song "Strength Through Music", based on the Columbine High School massacre.
Eliot's poem inspired The Hollow Men (1944), a piece for trumpet and string orchestra by composer Vincent Persichetti and one of his most popular works.
Jon Foreman of Switchfoot says that the band's song "Meant to Live" is inspired by Eliot's poem.
The Gaslamp Killer song In the Dark... has the lyrics "This is the way the world ends" in it.
The Greek black metal band Rotting Christ uses excerpts of the poem as lyrics for the song "Thine Is the Kingdom" on their album Sleep of the Angels. The final stanza of the poem is used as the song's chorus
Tim Minchin uses the last stanza at the end of his song: the Perineum Millennium.
The title song from The Smiths' studio album The Queen Is Dead features the closing repeated refrain, 'Life is very long', which the lyricist Morrissey has then personalised by adding the line 'when you're lonely'.
Axel Thesleff created a musical interpretation of the poem in form of a five-track LP.
British 90s band EMF used the line "this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends" using wordplay to add "not with a band" in their song Longtime on the album Schubert Dip
The hardcore punk group Code Orange use lines of the poem in their song "IV (My Mind Is A Prison)".
The Australian band TISM has a song on their 1986 EP Form and Meaning reach Ultimate Communion about T.S. Eliot titled "Mistah Eliot, He Wanker".
Television:
Japanese animation series: Highschool of the Dead - episode 12
British television series: Doctor Who ("The Lazarus Experiment") and Foyle's War (series 1, episode 3, which also name-drops "Ash Wednesday" and Horizons magazine, to which Eliot contributed)
American television shows: 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Northern Exposure, the title of the finale of Dexter’s sixth season (in which the protagonist also quotes the titular verse), Dollhouse (on "The Hollow Men" episode), Frasier, Mad Men, and The X-Files (on the "Pusher" episode). "The Haunting Hour" ("Scarecrow") "The Stand" (The Plague)
British television series The Fall references the poem in its title and in series 1 episode 3 serial killer Paul Spector writes the lines 'Between the idea and the reality, Between the motion and the act falls the Shadow' in his journal of his murders.
Netflix television series "Travelers", Reilly Dolman's character Phillip references the poem in season 1 episode 5 when interrogated with the question "How does the world end?"
