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Death, Decay and Dullness in the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot

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Death, Decay and Dullness in the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot Towards Excellence: An Indexed, Refereed & Peer Reviewed Journal of Higher Education / Tehzeeb Node & Milind K. Solanki/ Page 27-36 DEATH, DECAY AND DULLNESS IN THE SELECTED POEMS OF T. S. ELIOT Tehzeeb Node Milind K. Solanki Abstract: This paper aims to bring forth some of the recurrent themes in T. S. Eliot's selected poems such as The Hollow Men, Gerontion and Preludes. Themes such as Death, Decay and Dullness transpire in his poems. The Equation of Eliot with the Modern-World is well-evaluated in this paper, where his sense of desolation with the modern-day religion and the modern-day practices are shown. Also Eliot’s own perception over sin and virtue are also highlighted in the course of this paper. Keywords: Death, Decay, Dullness, Religion, Sexuality, Limbo, Dante, Nine Circles of Hell,Robot-like Life, Monotony, Routines Introduction: T. S. Eliot is known for some of his themes that are if not dull then obviously chaotic and too realistic. His Anglican-Christianity religiousness saw a world from a different viewpoint which was pale, sullen and full of filth and sin. Almost all his poems are suggestive of such images. His poems are more than just poems; they are more like a collage of various filthy images of a world we live. Eliot's work has a lot of pictures of a messed up civilization that has no religion left and whatever has left of it has been compromised. He saw sexuality from a different point of view, not the postmodern view. He thought that the world was heading towards something dark that he disapproved of. His poems under the present study, i.e., The Hollow Men, Gerontion and Preludes are full of grave pictures of filth and dullness/monotony in society. Sept, 2020. VOL.12. ISSUE NO. 4 https://hrdc.gujaratuniversity.ac.in/Publication Page | 27 Towards Excellence: An Indexed, Refereed & Peer Reviewed Journal of Higher Education / Tehzeeb Node & Milind K. Solanki/ Page 27-36 1. The Hollow Men: The Hollow Men by Eliot is a poem that takes its matter from Dante's Nine Circles of Hell. To be precise, he talks about only the first circle, which is Limbo. Limbo is a place in Dante's Nine Circles of Hell, where the people who are neither evil nor virtuous go. It is just a dark place where people are groping over each other in the darkness. Eliot writes, We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!" (Eliot 1-4) The name 'Hollow' itself means that there is nothing in these men, no flesh and no soul. They are stuffed with nothing. Their existence means nothing. They are just there, leaning over each other because perhaps they do not even have the strength to stand straight, which is why they need support from each other to stand. Their heads filled with straw, which could even be grass. They do not have any mind of their own, just their meaningless and futile existence. 'Alas!' is a sigh of these hollow men themselves over their helpless state. Eliot starts his poem by an Epigraph referring to Mistah Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the other reference is that of Guy Fawkes, from the Gunpowder plot in England. These two were also very evil. Eliot refers to these two because he wants to convey that if one is to live, he should either live like an evil person or a virtuous person. He should not live in a Limbo like existence where he does neither good nor evil. That is according to Eliot in itself a sin. The dried voices of these men suggest that whatever they say or talk is meaningless. When they speak, it comes out as a whisper because perhaps they do not even have a voice of their own. All this helplessness only suggests the hopelessness of lives, “As wind in dry grass" (Eliot 8) Sept, 2020. VOL.12. ISSUE NO. 4 https://hrdc.gujaratuniversity.ac.in/Publication Page | 28 Towards Excellence: An Indexed, Refereed & Peer Reviewed Journal of Higher Education / Tehzeeb Node & Milind K. Solanki/ Page 27-36 This line suggests that whatever they do or speak, it is as meaningless as the wind in dry grass. Eliot also gives an example of Rat's feet on the broken glass, which suggests two things, one is meaninglessness, and the other is that rats are agents of destruction and these men too are the same. These 'rats', according to Eliot, live in a dry cellar; it suggests the dryness in the existence of the hollow men. These Hollow Men are, as Eliot suggests, shape, but without a form, shade, but any colour,they are a paralyzed force and a gesture without motion. All this only suggests that whatever these hollow men do is devoid of any use. These men are so meaningless that even the 'lost violent souls' pass them with direct eyes, and they could not meet their eyes because of their uselessness. Heaven here is described as 'death's dream kingdom', and hell is 'death's other kingdom'. The Hollow men are afraid of both these kingdoms and cannot even imagine meeting eyes of them both. They say that even if the eyes of 'death's dream kingdom' fall on them, it will only be like sunlight falling on a broken column. One should take note that almost all the images in Eliot's poems are full of broken images. The hollow men would rather wear desperate disguises like a rat's coat and crow skin rather than face the reality of the world. They would instead act like scarecrows than be anything meaningful. The land that they live in is dead. It is a 'cactus land', and nothing meaningful ever grows here. All we are left to worship is that of stone. They worship stone images. Furthermore, all the light they have is of a fading star. Even the fading star resembles that of death. Moreover, the blindness of their lives is the dullness they have to ponder on. Even the valley they live in after their death is a hollow valley that resembles their selves. It is like a 'broken jaw' as per Eliot. They are just sightless, and the only hope for them is that of the 'multifoliate rose' which suggests the Virgin Mary. They call them 'empty men' because all their lives they have done nothing, and even after their Sept, 2020. VOL.12. ISSUE NO. 4 https://hrdc.gujaratuniversity.ac.in/Publication Page | 29 Towards Excellence: An Indexed, Refereed & Peer Reviewed Journal of Higher Education / Tehzeeb Node & Milind K. Solanki/ Page 27-36 death, they do nothing. Neither do they go to heaven nor hell? It is their punishment for doing nothing. When the lost violent souls are crossing the Tumid River- the river of forgetfulness, the hollow men could only see them because they could not cross this river. They stand there at the banks of the river, groping on each other, sightless and devoid of any speech. Now, these men are just going round and round in circles. They have lost their innocence and are also without any God above them. They go around aimlessly. They even tried to pray but could not sing. This poem sounds like a chanting which suggests that these hollow men are not individualistic at all and whatever they do or sing is in chorus. Whatever they try to do, a shadow falls in between, and they are interrupted. In the end, they say that they do not die with a bang but like lost violent souls but with a whimper. 2. Gerontion Gerontion, meaning 'an old man' in French is poetry about the dying civilization of Europe. Gerontion, the persona of the poem, is the embodiment of this dying civilization. Throughout the poem, this persona talks about how he has done nothing worthwhile all his life and now he sits here being red to by a boy. Usually, older people read or narrate stories of their young times to their grandchildren; here, the young boy is reading to him. This older man lives on a hill, in a filthy neighborhood. Here the older man is waiting for rain because rain referred to flood/abundance in Christianity and left for this persona who embodies the English civilization is drought and dryness. The older man had done nothing heroic in his entire life like being in the war of Thermopylae or being knee-deep in the salt marshes or even been bitten by a bee. All his life has been dull, and now he has no story to tell. His neighborhood is dirty and monotonous about it and writes, "Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds." (12) The woman keeping the kitchen, making tea, sneezing in the evening and poking the gutter shows the dullness of life in the current civilization. The old man Sept, 2020. VOL.12. ISSUE NO. 4 https://hrdc.gujaratuniversity.ac.in/Publication Page | 30 Towards Excellence: An Indexed, Refereed & Peer Reviewed Journal of Higher Education / Tehzeeb Node & Milind K. Solanki/ Page 27-36 himself calls him a "dull head" in windy spaces which refers to his meaninglessness in the society. Other than the dying civilization, this poem also refers to the dying religion among people. Jesus was to wash away the sins of humankind. Nevertheless, his signs are taken as nothing but miracles. Jesus, the savior of humanity, was killed and now in return, people are flowering Judas, the very murderer of Jesus. People are displayed to be reluctant of religion or to be worshipping sexual pictures of Gods made by the Titians.
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