The hollow men & Heart of Darkness

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Reader’s Response: The Hollow Men While reading the T.S Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”, I could feel the depressing tone that he was trying to convey to the readers. I think that this poem is basically talking about the depressing depiction of human kind. I think that the hollow men represent the humans on earth that are wandering around in search of something that doesn’t necessarily exist, but can also represent soldiers in war, who are stuffed with ideas of what people think about them and false assumptions. The hollow men are aware of their unfortunate fate so they try to hide from that and their insecurities by disguising themselves in costumes that reflect the ugly immoral side of themselves and reveal their animalistic side. The implementation of nursery rhymes in the poem has multiple meanings to me. My first interpretation is that T.S Eliot is insinuating that the hollow men have been stripped of their innocence and are attempting to get that back through child like antics. I also interpret the last stanza of the poem as the hollow men being taunted by the nursery rhyme which signifies their inevitable downfall as the world ends. At the end of the poem he tells us that the world isn’t going to end with a big bang, but with a whimper. I interpret this as the hollow men dying without gaining any recognition from anyone, and that they just sort of fade away quietly leaving no memory of their meaningless life behind. This poem can relate to our present society in any number of ways. Today there are a lot of people who are struggling for their voices to be heard, and for their actions not to be seen as meaningless. There are many people all over the world who have been praying to certain gods, and putting their faith in certain religions looking to be saved, however they never receive what they’re looking for. You can take the examples of warfare
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