Woo, Charis Mr. Davis AP Literature 02 May 2012 The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot 1. Read for Comprehension a. Life may or may not end early, but in the end people will die and fade away. 2. List author’s techniques Oxymoron - “Shape without form, shade without colour” Imagery “In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves” Repetition - “The eyes are not here” and “This is the way the world ends” and “We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men” 3. Link techniques to the theme. With the oxymoron, Eliot tries to link how life is meaningless and ironic itself, because with life there must be death, but in essence both or opposites and one can’t be in both states at the same time. In the same way “shape without form, shade without colour” cannot coexist on one form. Using imagery, Eliot relates the pictures he draws to how meaningless life may be. In this imagery that Eliot describes, the narrator is afraid of death and wants to hide with the disguise of a skin. Skin can disguise what something is, and Eliot is saying that people can’t hide from death, and that it will come when the time is right. Finally, constantly saying that “The eyes are not here” Eliot is stressing that when people are gone, you can’t hold on to them forever. Life is nor immortal, and death must be accepted, because “this is the way the world ends.”