Broken

The hollow men avoid anything that reveals to them how broken and meaningless their culture and existence has become.  “There, they eyes are sunlight on a broken column” (Eliot l.22-23).  The place being referred to is “death’s dream kingdom” (l.20), one of the three kingdoms alluded to in the poem.  In death’s dream kingdom “eyes are sunlight on a broken column” (l.22-23).  It is a place where the collapse of culture is revealed to the hollow men.   A column is a symbol of structure, foundation, and culture, and is often associated with the culture of the ancient Greeks.  The “broken column” (l.22) is symbolizing a collapse and breakdown of cultural structure.  In the 1920’s the obsession with materialism, as previously examined in Gatsby, caused the loss of all meaningful things like tradition, spirituality, and art, all of which to Greeks heavily emphasized.  “The eyes are sunlight” (l.22-23), shedding light onto this corruption in culture.  However the hollow men do not want to meet these eyes in death’s dream kingdom.   “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams” (l.19) suggests that they do not want to acknowledge that their culture is meaningless and broken.  They do not want to meet these eyes because everything they have been denying, specifically their meaningless existence, will be proven true.

I agree with Maggie on the idea that the Wordle does not accurately portray the crux of The Hollow Men, however there is a small connection.  The word "broken" is relatively large; a term that is used to describe different images throughout the poem.  As previously mentioned, the "broken column" (l.23) represents a corrupt and meaningless culture just as the "broken glass" (l.9), "broken stone" (l.51), and "broken jaw"(l.56) each evoke an image related to this theme.  The repetition of this word "broken" may be related to the crux but other bolded and enlarged words like "kingdom" and "men" are simply repeated for the purpose of context.