A Limbo of Hollows: The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men is a poem that talks about death and about its different stages. When I first read the poem it was a little confusing because I wasn’t very sure weather that it was talking about spirits or humans. As I read the text for a second time, I realized that the whole poem was actually an allusion to the stage that comes after death, such as a state of limbo. The descriptions that I saw in this poem were very similar to those in Dante’s Inferno as well.
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men” (1-2)

As I read these lines, there were certain things that popped into my head. The first connection that I was able to do, was the one were I observed that the “hollow men” could be actually spirits, because they are empty. This can be a representation of the human soul. It is physically empty, but spiritually stuffed, just as it describes above. The next line led me to think that my theory was even more appropriate.

“Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion” (11-12)

If something is shapeless, colorless, forceless, and motionless, then it has to be invisible, and therefore almost nonexistent, but at the same time it is mentioned there as something that is present in the setting of this poem, meaning that it does exist. The only thing that I could think of as a possibility for the characters of the text was spirits of people that had passed away. This had a very strong connection to the Inferno, because this place is full of dead people that are paying for their sins. They will do this eternally because they are not alive anymore, but their soul will always be.

The following quote was the one that convinced me that the narrators of this poem were souls of the limbo.

“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”(12-16)

When they mention “those who have crossed to deaths other kingdom,” it means that they have seen have the rest of the souls have passed through the limbo and then have went to their designated circles in hell, went to the purgatory or were received in heaven. These are the kingdoms of death, described by Dante in The Divine Comedy. When they refer themselves not as violent souls, but as hollow men, it is precisely because they are neutrals, haven’t really sinned as much but they never did make part of the church, which made them non spiritual beings, therefore hollow inside.

Throughout the whole poem, the narrators describe a pair of eyes that are continuously watching over them.
“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams...
The eyes are not here...”(II/IV)

These eyes can represent various things. One possibility is that they are the eyes of God, who is watching them from above constantly to see what they are doing and not doing. Another possibility is that these eyes belong to Beatrice, Dante’s true love, for whom this man travels throughout the three kingdoms of death, just to be with.

This poem, was pretty much in my point of view an allusion to Dante’s Inferno, specially the Canto were the Limbo is described as well as its members. There are other allusions that could be found, but this one was the most obvious one.