"The Hollow Men"

I would first like to say that I love this poem! I had more then one Epiphany. Beautiful.



The Hollow Men


Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
                                                                               (Reference to "Heart of Darkness)
           A penny for the Old Guy                         

              I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
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

(The hollow men have thoughts and opinions that are meaningless, stuffed with straw they gather together to converse about nothing, since what they have to say is meaningless. When wind blows through dry grass it remains unmoved, just as meaningless words can't change opinions and actions. Rats are so light weight that when the run over broken glass it does nothing to the rat or the grass.)
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

(You cannot have shape without form, shade without color, gesture without motion. Without one there can't be the other. The hollow men are incomplete.)

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

(The hollow men do not want to be remembered as something their not by the respectful dead. The were not lost or violent, just hollow, and should be seen as such.)
               II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

(The hollow men cannot meet the eyes of the dead because they have nothing to offer them.)
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises

(Simply, the hollow men will do anything to hide from the eyes of the respectful dead. They will deliberately disguise themselves from the eyes of judgement.)
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

(This stanza is giving examples of disguises possible. When hiding in a field while the wind is blowing you must move with it. If the hollow men don't the grass around them will move and they won't, giving away their hiding.)

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

(Statement of fear. Cowering in the thought of being judged to go to heaven or hell, the final meeting.)
         III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

(Supplication means a prayer to God for help. They are at the land of judgment, praying, doing what they can to get to heaven.)
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

("In death's other kingdom..." is referring to hell. "At the hour..." is referring to the hour of the final judgment; heaven or hell.)
           IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

(The eyes, throughout the entire poem, have referred to the eyes of the respectful dead, the dead that received positive judgment and went to heaven. In hell those eyes are not present. The hollow men never had good things to say, nor do they now. So in hell they have broken jaws because speech is useless for them. Connecting to the " . . .broken stones . . ." above, the prayers coming from the broken jaws of the hollow men mean nothing therefor the stones they are praying too have no need to be sturdy, they are broken too.)
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
(In Greek mythology, when going to receive your' final judgment, you go on a boat that crosses a river. The hollow men are waiting for this boat, not speaking because they is nothing of importance to say. And  they are scared.)

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

(They only hope the hollow men have is of seeing the eyes of the respectful dead, when seeing those they know they have passed judgment.)
                       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.

(Judgment is bitter-sweet.)
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

(Everything is laid out on the table. The hollow men's lives are looked at in depth. If there ideas were bad or good and whether they were put to action or not. The shadow of judgment falls between every aspect of their lives.)
                    For Thine is the Kingdom                  (Lord prayer.)

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

(Once again, were there concepts positive or negative and were they created or not, where the hollow men's responses to certain emotion worthy of a heavenly after life?)
                Life is very long         (The judgment is taking a long time, the hollow men are getting anxious.)

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

              For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

(Re-stating, For thine is the Kingdom, Life is very long, and For Thine is the Kingdom.)
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

(The last stanza give such strong imagery. I imagine a bunch of cowardly spineless men, whimpering underneath a hooded judge. Their life strewn out before their eyes. They can see just as well as the eyes and the judge that their life is not worthy of heaven and with one last whimper they are sent to hell.)