Eliot's poem gets at the hollow center of his passive, exiled speakers. They're not good enough to get into heaven, but they're also not bad enough to be sent to hell. Yikes.
This poem also has some of Eliot's most famous lines, like: "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." Aw, yeah.
How does Eliot use ideas about form and essence to explain the "hollow men," and what they're missing? (In other words, why are they hollow?)
"The Hollow Men" has tons of allusions as well—even snippets of nursery rhymes woven into the free verse. So a New Critic might ask: What effect does the form of this poem (and its different sections) have on your reading experience?
Some critics have noted that Eliot often talked about journalists and politicians in the same way that he talked about the "hollow men" in this piece. Do you think we should use Eliot's other writing to look inside "The Hollow Men"? Or should we stay with our noses close to this text?
Tough questions, we know. But kind of fun, right?