“Not with a bang . . .”

The epigraph for T.S. Eliot’s modernist poem “The Hollow Men” is a quotation from Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, “Mistah Kurtz, he dead.” Fittingly the mysterious Kurtz, who is touted by one and all as a wonder boy, turns out to be hollow, a symbol of modern man. Kurtz, you may recall, is remembered for exclaiming, “The horror, the horror,” as the knowledge of his own evil heart becomes apparent to him as he is dying. More on the novella later.

The poem proceeds to give a series of images both visual and auditory that invoke aridity, sterility, and hopelessness. It is a poem of allusion and image foremost; it lacks any real narrative structure. Eliot himself had doubts about it, this sequel to The Wasteland.  Note the first two stanzas which pressent the image of man as scarecrow: his voice a dry whisper like rats’ feet stepping through glass. There is no shape, no form, no color — no life in these men. They aren’t remembered as lost, violent souls, but as “stuffed” or “hollow.”

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

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

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.

Section V is the most gripping (There are V in all.)  The collective speaker in the poem, modern man, has realized his fulity and vapid existence and seeks salvation. He tries to pray, but is able only to weakly whisper partially remembered phrases of the Lord’s Prayer. These pitiful lines are interspersed with the idea of man’s fecklessness, ineptitude, and enervation. The Shadow falls between any attempt made to act effectively and accomplish — to be a real man. Last the speaker pitifully gives up on the prayer and recites a nursery rhyme, the words changed from “here we go round the prickly pear” to “”This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The hollow, modern man cannot even blow himself to bits.  The world of the poem will not pass violently away with a battle cry. It will whimper and die in the same pathetic way that it existed.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

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

Life is very long

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

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.

It is interesting to note that apparently this poem was crafted as Eliot was beginning to visit various churches, an important step in his journey from atheist to Christian.