The Hollow Men

There is extensive use of psychology used in the writing of T.S. Elliot. In a lot of his work, Elliot’s characters tend to get caught up in the surreal, purgatory like landscape. It is almost a neutral landscape, where there is no such thing as time and you’re waiting to be judged. Elliot’s “The Hollow Men” is a perfect example of this. In J. Hillis Miller’s summary of The Hollow Men, he mentions the presence of a “dead land,” a “cactus land,” a “valley of dying stars,” hollow like the men themselves. That is psychologically affecting to the reader, and you can tell that the narrator and the main characters are affected psychologically. The psychology of the character affects the setting in most of Elliot’s poems; it also affects the mood and tone as well.