world People are alive but inside they are dead They live without faith without soul and without true purpose Eliot also describes the world as a dead land He writes This is the dead land This is cactus land The land is dry barren and lifeless They cannot face the eyes of truth or God so they hide in disguises Here prayers are meaningless and people worship stone images instead of God The hollow men also cannot speak to one another they remain silent and divided In the last part Eliot writes about the Shadow that falls between thought and action Thoughts never become deeds Dreams never turn into reality Between desire and fulfilment between hope and result falls the Shadow of failure The poem ends with the famous line This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper Whimper means a low feeble sound to express fear pain or unhappiness So the world is full of fear pain and unhappiness and it is likely to end this way This is the final collapse of modern civilization where disorder and decay destroy everything Imagery and Symbols Eliot uses strong imagery to show spiritual disorder The hollow men are described as stuffed men with heads filled with straw like scarecrows This image symbolizes emptiness inside Their voices are like wind in dry grass This image suggest weakness Eyes are another symbol in the poem They stand for vision truth and spiritual power But the hollow men cannot face the eyes The dead land and cactus land symbolize the lifeless world without faith or love The Shadow is the most powerful image It shows the gap between dream and reality between will and action All these symbols together give the poem a haunting and fearful picture of modern life Form Meter and Rhyme The form of the poem is unusual The poem is written in free verse with no fixed rhyme or meter It is divided into five parts Some parts are very short like broken fragments This reflects the broken condition of the modern world Figures of Speech In this poem we find Eliot s striking use of figures of speech He compares modern people to stuffed men This powerful metaphor means modern men are empty inside without soul purpose or real strength The poet also uses repetition to make his message stronger Eliot also uses nursery rhyme style in some lines like Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear This childish rhythm in a serious poem increases the sense of emptiness and irony Tone and Language The tone of the poem is dark fearful and full of despair Eliot s language is simple but powerful He uses short words and broken images to show emptiness The sound of the poem is weak and hollow just like the hollow men it describes At the end the line Not with a bang but a whimper gives a soft but chilling close The language expresses both sadness and warning about the spiritual decay of the modern age In conclusion The Hollow Men is one of Eliot s most powerful poems of despair It shows modern man as spiritually dead unable to act pray or love The use of images like hollow bodies dry land and falling shadow creates a haunting atmosphere Its broken form and repetitive rhythm match its broken subject nbsp