Sightless

 Similar to Virginia, I believe that these hollow men are meaningless because they have no hope. In the poem, these “hollow” men fear that they are hopeless and broken men unable to see the promise of hope due to their meaningess existence in the “valley of dying stars” (Elliot l.54). In other words, they might as well be dead. At least when they are dead they escape this ‘hell-hole’ of a valley and receive “death’s twilight kingdom”(l.65), also known as limbo. Limbo is a waiting place, and the “hope only of empty men” (l.66-67). But how can someone so empty and so hollow have hope? The answer is, they cannot. They are “sightless” (l.61) and do not see any hope. These “eyes” that “reappear” are the promise of hope (hence the reason why "eyes" is bold and important in the Wordle). This is when they can escape the sightless, broken men that they fear they are (and are becoming).  Finally, with this hope, they can acquire the “perpetual star” (l. 63) or the infinite hope, shining brightly to lead them to a better, less hollow life. Hope itself is everlasting and constantly reappearing all over the world. All people need is the sight to see it.

The common words in this poem do not totally connect with the understanding of the crux of the poem. The words such as “shadow” and “together” do not seem as necessary to be mentioned multiple times in the poem and bold in the Wordle. “Together” evokes a sense of unity among men in the world as they “grope together and avoid speech”(l.58-59). But, do the hollow men really need unity if they cannot even communicate through the poem?  With unity, they could seek hope more easily with the help of others, yet instead, they are sitting around doing nothing. The word “shadow” arouses a sense of secrecy, covering something with a “deliberate disguise” (l.32) that should be hidden. If they are all hollow and all share the same sense of hopelessness, they do not have to hide anything. What would they hide other than their embarrassment of the fact that they are useless and hopeless in this “broken jaw of [their] lost kingdoms” (l.56)?