Quote Analysis in The Hollow Men

Just as section V begins with a musical chant that appears in italics, it ends with another, and both are dark in tone and theme. The world’s ending with a “whimper” rather than a “bang” echoes the “quiet and meaningless” whispering of the hollow men in section I. It also implies that life in the modern world is no longer lived with purpose, passion, faith, or courage.

“Falls the Shadow” serves as a refrain in this stanza and the two that follow. The three stanzas are constructed with parallel phrases followed by the refrain. The concept of that which is desired remaining incomplete or unfulfilled is the theme in each of the three stanzas and echoes the lines in section I: “Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralyzed force, gesture without motion.” The “shadow” may be interpreted as symbolizing the “Paralyzed force”—the paralysis of the spirit and the will—that afflicts modern life, rendering it futile and meaningless.

The stanza is a dark variation of the chant that is sung in playing the children’s game, “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.” A mulberry bush is a plant that produces flowers. The “prickly pear” in this chant is a cactus, which recalls the reference to “cactus land” in section III.

A synecdoche for those who had lived and died with purpose and faith, there are no “eyes” in modern society, suggesting a lack of not only vision but clarity.

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the afterlife consists of three realms or kingdoms: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or heaven. In the context of the following lines, the “other kingdom” seems to refer to a realm other than Paradise since it is characterized by isolation and loneliness. If the answer to the question posed in the two lines is yes, the inference can be drawn that modern life is a living death.

In the context of the stanza, “stone images” suggests the worship of idols. The figurative idols worshiped by the hollow men of the speaker’s post-World War I generation are open to interpretation—though being made of stone, they can be considered lifeless and immutable.

“Remember us” contributes to the past/present time motif in the poem by drawing a distinction between those who had lived and died in the past and the “hollow men” of the present age. The conclusion of section I brings it full circle to the allusions in the epigraph. Fictional Mr. Kurtz and the historical Guy Fawkes are the “lost / Violent souls” of the past. They stand in contrast to the “hollow men” of the present. It may be inferred that although Kurtz and Fawkes were “lost” and “violent,” they acted on their beliefs, however misguided, which is preferable to believing in nothing and failing to act at all.