T.S Eliot is a fascinating yet challenging poet to understand, particularly when studying his poetry in English Advanced.
With this in mind, Boldtutor presents an exclusive response to the 2016 HSC English Advanced question focusing on T.S Eliot’s poetry.
Use the response below as a foundation to build your own essay focusing on one of the most famous poets in human history.
2016 HSC question: How does Eliot use fragmentation to portray alienation in his poetry? In your response make reference to The Hollow Men and at least one other poem
Throughout T.S Eliot’s poetry, fragmentation is used to illustrate the moral and spiritual instability and alienation that plagues modern society. For Eliot, humanity was developing existential concerns regarding the meaning of life in the aftermath of WWI. Having been inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Eliot’s use of fragmentation helps him present his concerns about the state of a society that has lost all moral and spiritual direction. As a result, poems such as The Hollow Men and Rhapsody on a Windy Night incorporate disturbing imagery and personification, historical and religious allusions and an overall melancholic tone as a way for Eliot to portray humanity’s spiritually fragmented and isolated nature in a world torn apart by conflict, gluttony and death.
The use of historical and religious allusion in The Hollow Men helps Eliot incorporate fragmentation that conveys social and personal alienation. Shaped by Dante’s Inferno, Eliot’s The Hollow Men is a fractured poem that focuses on ‘death’s dream kingdom’ and the concrete torment that exists within a setting that is fragmented on a spiritual and moral level. The poem examines the doubt and ambivalence that was engrained in society after the conclusion of WW1. Many individuals during this period lost their sense of selves and direction following such a tragic war. These individuals are alluded to in The Hollow Men when Eliot conveys them as people lacking a morale compass and soul. Metaphorically, they are ‘stuffed’ men full of sin, ‘filled with straw’. Through the use of simile, the speech of these cursed individuals are presented as ‘quiet and meaningless/ As wind in dry grass’, which symbolizes the ineffectual effect that language has on the lifeless wasteland that humanity inhabits. Furthermore, the mention of a wasteland inhabited by spiritually alienated individuals is consistent with Dante’s Hell, which is also saturated with sinful beings whose voices are filled with anguish, confusion and despair. To combat such alienation, Eliot makes reference to ‘a penny for the Guy’ – an allusion to the Gunpowder Plot involving revolutionary Guy Fawkes. This reference may hint at the likelihood of one’s need to pledge their lives to a cause worth dying for – an honorable sacrifice of sorts that may serve to purify the souls of the hollow men and gain entrance into the ‘Twilight Kingdom’. Indeed such bravery is also evident in Dante’s Inferno. Dante learns to control his fear and undertake the journey through hell with Virgil in a bid to save his soul and become one with god in paradise. The Hollow Men also contains allusions to spiritual redemption by its repetitive reference of the Lord’s Prayer ‘for Thine of Kingdom’. Of significant importance also is Eliot’s portrayal of hope, which is symbolized in the motif of stars. Such a motive is also evident throughout Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the poet famously ends his Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise poems with a literal and symbolic reference to stars. Like Dante, Eliot’s mention of a ‘twinkle of a fading star’ serves as a symbol of holy guidance that will lead alienated souls into ‘Death’s dream kingdom’. Such a remark suggests that Eliot’s poetry, as vividly depressing as it is on the surface, can be interpreted as an enlightening portrait of the spiritual faith that one may require in order to repair one’s alienated spiritual and moral being.
Eliot’s usage of disturbing visual imagery and personification are key tools that help him develop fragmentation that portrays the social alienation of the protagonist in Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Feelings of melancholy, coupled with description of emotional and spiritual decay are at the forefront of Rhapsody on a Windy Night. This poem chronicles a man’s early-morning journey through a desolate street that symbolizes humanity’s spiritually shallow nature. The individual’s fragmented nature is made clear given that he begins his journey at ‘Twelve o’clock’ (midnight), which is an unusual time to start a journey. The male figure walks through a street ‘held in a lunar synthesis, whispering lunar incantations’. The moon has been personified here as it whispers words that put the entire society that it overlooks under its spell. In this case, the spell involves ‘dissolve (ing) the floors of memory and all its clear relations, its divisions and precisions’. In other words, the society that the male figure walks upon is now temporarily in a twilight state – a state of obscurity and gradual moral and spiritual decline. Overall, the male figure in the poem inhabits a depressing landscape that sees him venture ‘through the spaces of the dark’ as ‘midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium’. Eliot is thus implying that his evening journey through a disheartening street agitates his conscience. In other words, the male figure is convulsing as his mind suffers psychological disturbances as a result of his exposure to the spiritual decay of urban society. Indeed the mind, like a geranium (flower), requires soil (moral and spiritual foundation) to grow, and without this, growth is impossible.
The protagonists’ psychological alienation is made further apparent in stanza three through the personification of a fragmented memory that ‘throws up high and dry a crowd of twisted things’. The memory throws ‘a twisted branch upon the beach’ and ‘a broken spring in a factory yard’. These objects of course are metaphors for the man’s perverted way of thinking. His mind is very unstable and it now produces images that reflect a morally ‘broken’ and ‘twisted’ society. Society’s moral alienation is further portrayed through the description of a predatory cat that ‘devours a morsel of rancid butter’. The word ‘rancid’ means tainted, and thus implies that humanity, like a desperate cat, will consume whatever it has to in order to satisfy the basic lust for pleasure or hunger. Such thinking is further reflected by the description of a child committing theft:
‘So the hand of a child, automatic, slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay, I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.’
The description of ‘hand of a child, automatic’ helps Eliot compare the child to the notion of time. Like the passing of time, the child’s craving to steal is ‘automatic’ and is thus apart of his psychological makeup. In turn, the child lacks a moral soul and he is now spiritually empty, hence the line ‘I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.’ The actions of this alienated child thus reflects the lack of a moral and spiritual code in modern society.
The final stanza reaffirms the aura of fatalism and spiritual, moral and psychological fragmentation that is prominent through the poem. Having returned to his apartment at ‘Four o’clock’ in the morning, the male figure decides to ‘Mount’ his bed and ‘sleep’ in a bid to ‘prepare for life – The last twist of the knife’. The metaphor here portrays Eliot’s pessimism towards life as the male figure decides to accept his alienation – an alienation that will slowly but surely bleed moral and spiritual goodwill out of the individuals who inhabit a society shaped by the performance of base action.
Through the incorporation of certain literary devices, Eliot’s poetry effectively creates fragmented settings and characters that convey the deep spiritual and moral alienation that people felt during a context of great conflict and death. Such a melancholic portrayal of alienation encourages readers to reflect on existential concerns regarding the meaning of life and whether or not the path we have chosen will lead to spiritual and moral development.
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