{"id":52063,"date":"2024-05-15T06:33:01","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T06:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essays.homeworkacetutors.com\/2024\/05\/heart-of-darkness-and-the-hollow-men-essay\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T06:33:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T06:33:01","slug":"heart-of-darkness-and-the-hollow-men-essay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/heart-of-darkness-and-the-hollow-men-essay\/","title":{"rendered":"Heart of Darkness and \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d Essay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness reveals the theme of self-reflection, however that reflection leads to a caliginous finish filled with vacantness. A poem written in 1925, \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d by T.S. Eliot, portrays a nearly equivalent feeling of emptiness. Both of which form a vacuous, hollow existence of man. Conrad and Eliot\u2019s work mirrors each other\u2019s directly with their internal reflection and overall emptiness. In fact, Eliot even begins his poem with \u201cMistah Kurtz- He dead.\u201d a citation from Heart of Darkness.<\/p>\n

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Poems often intend to express more than what they literally say within their lines. In T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cHollow Men,\u201d Eliot depicts the insignificant lives of these \u201chollow men,\u201d \u201cstuffed\u201d with worthlessness.<\/p>\n

He then goes on to explain how the men go about their daily lives and \u201cwhisper together\u201d meaningless things. Eliot also speaks of the eyes that are \u201cmore distant and more solemn than a fading star.\u201d The hollow men\u2019s eyes are in a sort of hellish state, with stares of nothingness as they gaze out among the world.<\/p>\n

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God\u2019s eyes seem out of reach to these hopeless men, God\u2019s eyes \u201cdo not appear,\u201d they are too distant for them to reach. \u201cThis dead land this cactus land here the stone images are raised,\u201d men in this barren and empty land are seen worshipping false gods, worthless stone. The only way for the hollow men to find hope is for God to be brought pack in and praised in \u201cdeath\u2019s twilight kingdom,\u201d which in itself seems hopeless.<\/p>\n

Almost spontaneously Eliot brings in a nursery rhyme, creating a whimsical and simplistic way about the hollow men. Shortly after he starts the Lord\u2019s Prayer, \u201cFor thine is the Kingdom,\u201d and repeats it several times seeming to loose his train of thought, adding to the meaningless stuffing of these hollow men. \u201cThis is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper,\u201d ends Eliot\u2019s poem and also the lives of the hollow men, without meaning or significance. Like the theme of hollowness throughout \u201cThe Hollow Men,\u201d \u201cHeart of Darkness\u201d generates the similar theme of self-reflection and the eventual feeling of emptiness. The protagonist, Marlow, sees that England is filled with superfluous actions and material things.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inner truth is hidden.\u201d The character of Marlow consists of a wandering sailor with little knowledge of who he really is. When traveling throughout the world, Marlow\u2019s eyes open as he realizes the darkness of the world. Marlow leaves behind Eliot\u2019s \u201cdeliberate disguises\u201d and journeys to the void land of Africa. Soon He soon ascertains that Africa is very similar to England, in that it is centered around the worthless materials and money, \u201cthe word \u2018ivory\u2019 rang in the air\u2026 you would think they were praying to it.\u201d Marlow\u2019s main reason of going into this strange land was to check on the inner station and unintentionally on Kurtz.<\/p>\n

Through all of the things Marlow witnesses on his voyage, he discovers the true emptiness and hollowness within himself. The jungles of Africa assume the same roles as the deserts of \u201cThe Hollow Men,\u201d the area is barren and forsaken reflecting the mind of Marlow. In the \u201cinner station\u201d Marlow meets a character who seems to be \u201cstuffed\u201d like the men of Eliot\u2019s poem, \u201cI could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing but a little loose dirt.\u201d When Kurtz is finally introduced in Heart of Darkness he is repeatedly labeled as a \u201cuniversal genius,\u201d and this so-called genius is from his own inner reflections.<\/p>\n

Something \u201chad whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conceptions till he took counsel with this great solitude \u2013 and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.\u201d The whispers in \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d are also found throughout Heart of Darkness. Kurtz knows deep inside that he is empty and attempts to fill the void with these whispers.<\/p>\n

His remorse for these actions are revealed through his last words, \u201cThe horror! The horror!\u201d His genius was eventually seen for what it truly was; he knew was he had, a \u201chollow\u201d existence. The poem and novella both represent the masked, hollow, and meaningless existence of men, through a sense of reflection of oneself. Heart of Darkness is a tale of searching of meaningless ends and \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d reveals the tragedy of the hollowness in men, both show that these material obsessions of the world are worth nothing in the overall outlook of life.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness reveals the theme of self-reflection, however that reflection leads to a caliginous finish filled with vacantness. A poem written in 1925, \u201cThe Hollow Men\u201d by T.S. Eliot, portrays a nearly equivalent feeling of emptiness. Both of which form a vacuous, hollow existence of man. Conrad and Eliot\u2019s work mirrors each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5817],"tags":[5681,5675,5659,5656,5658,5660,5848,5663,5657],"class_list":["post-52063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-ace-my-homework","tag-construct-a-5-to-6-page-paper","tag-create-a-4-6-page","tag-discussion-assignment","tag-for-this-assignment-you-will-write-a-paper","tag-help-write-a-word-paper","tag-homework-answers","tag-online-homework-help-do-my-online-class-assignment","tag-presentation-assignment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}