Poems

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O where are you going reader think of big questions in life providing universal meanings for each individual. Stanza One

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The 'O' is deliberately archaic (old fashion). Auden writes in an archaic style to make the poem echo throughout time. He addresses us as the 'reader' on the first line. Another character is included being the 'rider'. This is someone who is controlling or it could simply be just a man on a horse (different interpretations).  The 'valley' on line 2 could be a valley from the bible providing biblical reference.  There is alliteration of 'fatal' and 'furnaces'. The furnaces are again archaic diction.  'midden' on line 3 is an old fashion word for a dung hill (poo pile).  The 'odours will madden' means the odours from the dung hill will drive you mad.  More alliteration is used with 'gap' and 'grave'.  The last line of stanza 1 is foreboding. No matter how tall you are you will still head to the grave. Stanza Two  Mentioning a 'farer' suggests they are going somewhere. Having a 'fearer' suggests he is afraid creating fearfulness. We believe he is afraid of death from what he says below.  There is reference to time of day, 'dusk'. With it being the end of day links in with a end of a life (death). Alliteration is used on 'dusk' and 'delay'.  The fact that 'dusk will delay' makes clear that they are trying to hold of the day relating back to death: they are trying to prevent and hold off death.  As well as alliteration on 'path to the pass', the path could be a gap in the mountains which could be the path you cross when you die. You could then link this back to the valley featured in stanza one. Stanza Three  There is mention to a 'bird' which very symbolic. A bird has many different symbols making the use of a bird in this poem very vague. However, Auden does this on purpose just like he does with the time period.  Having a 'horror' now strengthens the fearfulness first developed by the 'fearer'. The poem is developing.  There is now a sense of threat, 'Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?'  Sibilance is used in the last two lines with examples such as swiftly, softly, spot, skin and shocking. The repeating 's' sound gives the impression that death is creeping up on the reader and the rider with death being disease.  'The Cutty Wren' was written just after the black death. Stanza 3 may link to this because the symptoms of the black plague were black spots or buboes on the skin, 'The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?' Stanza Four  This stanza has a quick and dramatic quality to it. The voices are flipped where the previous three stanzas have been 'calls'. Stanza four features the answers or response to these 'calls'.  There is a sense of paranoia created 'They're looking for you'.  The poem finishes with 'As he left him there, as he left him there'. There are many people rushing out of the house leaving somebody behind who is most likely going to have something bad happen to them. He will encounter the threat from stanza three most likely.

Summary
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The poem is in ballad form with suggests musical qualities that this poem should be sung. The structure adopts quatrain stanzas and quatrain ampibrach tentrametre rhyming. This is old fashioned adding to the archaic quality. The whole poem is dilerately archaic and vague (like many of Auden's poems) to help make his ideology echo throughout time and apply to all time periods.

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The structure imitates 'The Cutty Wren' poem where there are two voices in the form of a 'call (stanza 1-3) and response (stanza 4)'. The voices are given different names to build tension towards the ending. It helps the poem develop creating fear and paranoia. The fact we are mentioned as one of the voices 'reader' links us to the poem a lot more providing a clearer perspective (from the 'reader's/fearer's/horror's perspective).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Hollow men Lines 1-4
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

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Hold hands everyone, we're going to sing a song: "We are the hol-low men! We are the stuffed men!" Well, maybe these lines don't work as a Broadway showstopper, but it is striking that the Hollow Men are singing in chorus, as a group. At this point, we have no idea where they are. They are both "hollow" and "stuffed." Aren't these qualities the opposite of one another? Not if hollow means something like "lacking a heart," or in the Scarecrow's famous words from The Wizard of Oz: "If I only had a brain!" The Hollow Men are lacking something essential. They are also "stuffed" with straw, like an effigy of Guy Fawkes (see "Second Epigraph") or like a scarecrow. They are leaning together to support each other, as if they are frightened or cannot support themselves. We think of a bundle of sticks being stacked together to form a lean-to. They are not happy about their "hollow" condition, either, but they can only express their unhappiness in the one-word exclamation, "Alas!" This is a cheesy thing to say, and Eliot knows it. We shouldn't expect people whose heads are filled with straw to express themselves profoundly.

Lines 5-10
Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar

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The Hollow Men talk without saying anything meaningful. They speak in a soft "whisper," as if they are afraid that someone will hear them. In an especially haunting image, their voices are compared to the wind running through dry grass, which sounds like a quiet rattling or scraping. Or, as a second example, the voices sound like the feet of rats pitter-pattering over pieces of broken glass "In our dry cellar." If both these images make you shiver, you're on the right track. (If you've seen the Lord of the Rings series, does this remind you of Gollum at all?) At least we have learned about what the Hollow Men were like on earth. They had a "cellar" like many average people. The first stanza uses "dry" or "dried' three times. Eliot wants you to know: the Hollow Men are dry and do not have blood in the veins. They don't even have veins.



To make another comparison with the movies, remember how the renegade pirates in The Pirates of the Caribbeanwere cursed with being unable to eat or drink anything, and so their skin got dry and they began to fall apart? The Hollow Men have a similar curse. They are filled with straw, which is a kind of "dry grass."

Lines 11-12
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

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The speaker removes himself from the narration to give four examples of other things that have "missing essentials." Just like the Hollow Men, these things only half-exist, because they are missing something else that will make them real. The first example is "shape without form." A shape becomes a form when it has substance. Otherwise it's just an empty idea, like the difference between the ball you imagine in your head (a shape) and a ball of dough (a form). In the same line of thought, you can't have a "shade" without "color," because "shade" is a degree of color. But somehow, the Hollow Men have one without the other. (Also, Eliot is making a pun on the word "shade," which can mean "ghost"). "Force" is the power to act or move, but "Paralysed force" is a force that can't move or act. All of these examples are contradictory: they would make no sense in the real world. The final example is "gesture without motion." Can you make a gesture without moving? Here's an exercise: try making the universal gesture for "STOP!" without moving a muscle. Can you do it? Not unless you lived in some strange netherworld, which seems to be what we're dealing with in this poem.

Lines 13-18
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

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You could read these lines in two ways: 1) the Hollow Men are asking people who have crossed into "death's other Kingdom" to remember them as stuffed and empty men and not as violent and nasty people; or 2) the Hollow Men are stating as a fact that this is how they have been remembered. The difference is between "They remember me like this . . ." and "Remember me like this!" The word "crossed" might remind us of the "Second Epigraph," and the Greek myth where dead souls must pay Charon to cross the River Styx to enter the realm of the dead. For some reason, the Hollow Men never made it to the land of the dead. They are stuck in no-man's land. From a Christian perspective, "death's other Kingdom" sounds like Heaven, where souls look with "direct eyes" at God. The Hollow Men do not have "direct eyes." Do they even have eyes at all? Beware: we're about to throw more allusions at you. In particular, this whole poem seems to be inspired by the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet. Eliot was obsessed with Dante. Seriously obsessed. He borrowed so much from Dante that he should have to pay royalties. We think the idea for "The Hollow Men" comes from Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno. In that canto, Dante arrives at the gates of Hell and sees a group of people wandering around aimlessly and miserably, with lots of tears and wailing. As Dante's guide Virgil says, "They have no hope of death, and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other lot. The world does not permit report of them. Mercy and justice hold them in contempt. Let us not speak of them – look and pass by." To recap: the souls in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno can't even die, they are "blind," and the world will not "report of" or remember them. This sounds kind of like our Hollow Men, doesn't it?







As Virgil explains elsewhere in the canto, these souls did not take sides in the universal conflict between good and evil. They thought they lived their lives apart from difficult moral questions. In a sense, both Dante and Eliot believed that such people are the worst of all, because they are too timid or indifferent even to do bad things. As for "direct eyes," in the other two parts of the Divine Comedy, Purgatorio and Paradiso, Dante constantly describes the eyes of his great love, the heavenly Beatrice. She has the kind of eyes that can see right through a person's flaws and mistakes. Dante can't hide anything from her powerful vision. As a heavenly soul, she is also able to look "directly" at God. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leisure
In this poem davies protests against the hurry and worry of life, and mechanic attitude of man. ''WHAT IS THIS LIFE IF FULL OF CARE'' which makes the life of a person miserable. Man is the crown of all creatures but unfortunately his life is worse than animals due to lack of time and his boring, dull, mechanical routine. The basic idea of the poet is emphasized by the repition of the line: WE HAVE NO TIME TO STAND AND STARE. Lack of time is the main reason of depriving man from enjoying the life to its fullest. well in this poem the poet use a rhyme scheme. Rising and falling tone at the end of every line of the poem is really appealing. Davies made use of couplets here. People are worshipping mamoth. Thats why there are anxieties and frustrations in life. Well i believe ''excess of everything is bad''. The conclusion he derived from life is that this is a poor life. Mechanical life is not a life at all. Wordsworth has also presented the similar idea in his famous sonnet and i really love these lines: ''THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US:LATE OR SOON GETTING AND SPENDING WE LAY WASTE AUR POWERS LITTLE WE SEE IN NATURE THAT IS OURS''.
As the title of the poem suggests, it is about the availability of time for enjoying various delights of life. These may range from the most ordinary every day pleasure to the extraordinary events. The poet is lamenting over the rush and hurried manner in which we spend our lives. We deprive ourselves of the richness and diversity of life. The poet believes that life must be enjoyed in a casual leisurely manner. He thinks that we should spend our free time enjoying and appreciating the beauty of nature. We should find time to stand under the trees and look at beautiful objects of nature as sheep and cows do. While passing through the woods, we must pause to se the squirrels busy in hiding their nuts in the grass. We should also stop by streams of clear water glittering like skies at night. We must also find time to see the beautiful glance of a maiden and admire the skill of her dancing feet. We should not miss the beautiful smile playing at her face. In this way we can fill our lives with happiness. The poet expresses his grief at the fact that modern rush of life has deprived us of many commonplace pleasures. We run around after our material pursuits, so crazily that we get no time to spend in a relaxed manner. He warns us if our life remains full of worries and problems with no opportunity to enjoy its simple pleasures, it will be very miserable life.

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