What are some of the Literary Allusions in “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot?
Here are some: “Salvation. This is what the “Hollow Men” seek. Rising from the memory of Dante’s Divine Comedy, “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot draws us back into the world he created in The Waste Land, this time to examine the nature of enervation as it seeks salvation. The Hollow Men, like Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz from Heart of Darkness and England’s national villain Guy Fawkes, are men of high ideals but without moral fortitude. Their passionate quest for the Holy Grail of noble idealism has blinded them to the origin of the question itself and they have sacrificed their morality for the sake of idealism. Now they seek salvation. Eliot’s poem follows loosely and returns often to The Divine Comedy. Using Dante’s kingdoms of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise as a guide, Eliot has shaped a poem which can be seen as a continuation of The Waste Land, which was written just prior to this. He has also used epigraphic references to The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 (whose defeat is celebrated on Guy Fawk
