The In Betweeners

      The simple words in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" intertwine, stitching the ideas of the poem together into a seamless sheet. At the center of this sheet is "Between the idea And the reality, Between the motion And the act, Falls the Shadow", which holds the poem together. This "shadow"is  the barren waste where these Hollow Men exist, suspended in between life and whatever comes after. The repetition of the word "dry" and "dried" throughout the first stanza, along with the repeated "broken" imagery that persists throughout the next four, combine to create for the reader a barren and fallen shadow world in which these Hollow Men exist. In this imagery, the pain and suffering of the men is revealed, the repetition of these worlds, seemingly to no avail, mimics the frustration that the Hollow Men feel in being caught in this in-between world where they have no control. However these men have minds, as the reader sees them often thinking about what is on either side of their shadow world. There is the "other kingdom" the "dream kingdom" and the "twilight kingdom", all of which are no more than mental concepts created by the Hollow Men, who cannot know whether these kingdoms are "idea" or "reality". They present these kingdoms as if they are certain of the existence. Yet the simple question, formed of simple words, "Is it like this?" raises another question: do these Hollow Men actually know whether these kingdoms are real? They are caught in this land, a shadow cast by the known reality from which they have come and the idea they have created of where they may go. Behind them is the kingdom they came from, and somewhere across the river is a place they think they want to be. These kingdoms are their attempt at conceptualizing and making palpable the possibilities of where they could go when they cross the river out of the shadow.
      The Hollow Men do not appear to have their full humanity, their heads are "filled with straw" and when they talk it is "meaningless". It is as if they cannot stand on their own, "we grope together"; take one out, and they all crash like a child's building block tower. This idea of a lack of independence, which reveals itself through the dismembered body parts floating throughout the poem, "eyes", "lips", "jaw", "voice", supports the crux it where it says "Between the motion and the act". These men apparently cannot act on their own; There are no eyes where they are, lips float in some distant abyss, and their voices, when heard at all, are only a result of them being lifted and carried by the wind. When they were alive before this shadow world, could "act"- make choices and contentious decisions, unlike here, where they are just a hollow mass of men. However they have also not crossed over into some place where they can regain their motion; a place where "the eyes reappear" and their bodies can slowly reform like a "rose" blossoming again in the spring. "Between the idea And the Reality, Between the motion And the act, Falls the shadow" ties everything together- their disjointedness, their dreams, their lack of humanity and their conscious mind, and their existence stuck in between a shadow.