The Emptiness in The Hollow Men After Eliot published The Waste Land, he felt as if he had failed to fully convey the sense of desperation and emptiness in that work. Starting with “Doris's Dream Songs” and “Eyes I Last Saw in Tears,” he explored these themes, ultimately uniting all of these poems in The Hollow Men. The final product is a work that, unlike The Waste Land and its last chance for redemption, has as its conclusion only the indelible emptiness of empty men. Empty men are those who, in life, have not acted on their beliefs; they resisted any action and consequently stagnated eternally in the "Shadow", a land between heaven and hell, completely isolated from both. Eliot's allusions give a familiar literary and folk basis to the setting, while the symbols and lyrical progression convey the uselessness and spiritual "brokenness" of men. The poem's opening epigraph, "Mistah Kurtz--He dead" is the first of many allusions. to Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness. Eliot uses references to draw the reader's attention to the moral plight of Kurtz and the others "who have traversed/ With straight gaze, the other Realm of death." These men and Kurtz defined themselves by their actions, whether they were good or not. As Baudelaire says: "Insofar as we are human, what we do must be either bad or good; insofar as we do bad or good, we are human; and it is better, paradoxically, to do evil than to do evil." do nothing: at least we exist" (Drew 94). An accurate description of the condition of empty men, this quote was also used in the criticism of Heart of Darkness. Thus to the (spiritual) stagnation of the “tumid river” and those who wait next to it is contrasted with dynamism...... middle of paper ......submission to a world that ends "not with a bang but a whimper." Works Cited Brady, Ann Patrick. Lyricism in the poetry of TS Eliot. London: Kennikat Press, 1978. Drew, Elizabeth. TS Eliot: the design of his poetry. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949. Headings, Philip R.. T. S. Eliot, revised edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.Moody, A. David. TS Eliot's Cambridge Companion. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1994.Moody, A. David. TS Eliot, poet. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1994.Raine, Craig. "The Terrible Audacity of T. S. Eliot". The Guardian. 21. August 19, 1988.Roessel, David. "Guy Fawkes Day and the Peace of Versailles in 'The Hollow Men'". Notes on the English Language, September 1990. 52-58. vol. 28.Williamson, George. A reader's guide to TS Eliot. New York: Octagon Books, 1974.