EXISTENTIAL CRISIS AND COLLECTIVE FRUSTRATION IN T. S. ELIOT’S THE HOLLOW MEN

IV-INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERATURE, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE, Van, Türkiye, 5 - 07 Aralık 2025, ss.122-123, (Özet Bildiri)

From past to present, the masculinity motif has manifested its existence in various ways in

mythological, artistic and cultural works. In mythological sources, the depiction of gods as male

symbolized existential power, and at the same time, in literary works and epic narratives, the

male motif appeared as a protector and warrior. Artists such as Michelangelo addressed the

concept of masculinity with strong, aesthetic body depictions. T.S Eliot, one of the important

figures of the modernism movement reflects the spirit of the period, the social collapse,

existential crisis and destruction of faith in his poem The Hollow Men (1925), which he

published after World War I, with the motif of a hollow and powerless man in the post-war

period, when a collective consciousness emerged without the concept of individuality. In this

poem, Eliot evaluates the war as a consequence of the modern world, created by vested interests,

and deals with the inner search for meaning and spiritual conflicts of modern man, who has

realized the meaninglessness of war and is stuck with existential questions, lost in the feeling

of emptiness in the post-war period. Eliot, who experienced the silence and the breakdown of

faith among people, virtually criticizes the silence of god. In certain parts of the poem, he

describes modern humans as hollow men leaning on each other and compares them to a

scarecrow stuffed with straw. While pointing out humanity’s existential crisis and search for

meaning, Eliot likens people to being like scarecrows that move as the wind directs them, dead

beings who continue their lives in the same way and whose energy has been wasted. It strikingly

emphasizes that a person who has lost a loved one wakes up alone and prays to meaningless

gravestones instead of kissing his beloved. It tells the story of a man in deep existential and

spiritual void, filled with a desire for completion, experiencing a paradox and being stuck

somewhere between life and death, through the helpless male identity. Eliot rejects the

traditional definition of faith and whispers that mortality is an inevitable meaninglessness in

existence, through hollow men who waste themselves in meaningless actions that lead nowhere

and live a life of inactivity and purposelessness. This is how the world ends, according to Eliot,

not with a bang but whimper.