Julia Schwartz
September 23, 2003
T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” is eerily reminiscent of the darkness James Conrad seeks to elucidate in his novella, “Heart of Darkness.” Eliot’s poem is tinged with anger at a life lost – sorrow at lives wasted away toward what should have been but wasn’t. It is easy to superimpose the characters of “Heart of Darkness” – Marlow and Kurtz, specifically – upon the descriptions present in Eliot’s poem. Combined, the two present an unwavering view of what darkness is and how it possesses us.
The first of many ironies in Eliot’s poem is presented up front: “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men.” These lines directly provoke the concept of too much being not nearly enough, recalling the ways in which darkness takes hold of us: when we see too much, we cease to see at all. When we see so much that the illusion we have been carrying with us, an illusion that sustains our every action in our lives, is proven false by an abundance of evidence contrary to that hope we so desperately cling to, we can no longer believe in the dream; we can no longer believe in pure and untainted good: “much wisdom is much grief, and increase of knowledge is increase of sorrow” (Ecclesiastes).
Kurtz and Marlow both are “hollow men” – they have both set out on journeys through the Congo (“death’s dream kingdom”) from which they expect ease and success, and in which they are faced with disaster and inhumanity. The realities of the depths of the Congo are not the illusions Marlow expected; a quick and easy journey to make some money turned into a life experience. Marlow’s experiences in the Congo River Basin, especially his witnessing of Kurtz and Kurtz’s ridiculous actions, as well as the disparity of the natives in the Congo who are being persecuted and abused by the Belgians, make it impossible for him to continually recall a vision of ease, to constantly remind himself that he is on a lark in the jungle that will end quickly – and he will be able to return to his life.
The flaw in that reasoning, however, is that there is no return to his old life for Marlow; there is no return to any disillusioned life once the journey of discovery has begun. Once the deeds are witnessed, once the stories are told, once the first question is asked – there is no going back. Do or die becomes the choice: the choice to end life with a “bang” or a “whimper,” the choice to succumb to the horrors of “death’s Outer Kingdom,” or to somehow close the gap between “potency / And the existence” to somehow implement some change in the routines that have begun.
Marlow is able to come out of that deathly, shadowy kingdom alive, and he is able to grasp a piece of the trail of that “perpetual star” that hangs there in the sky for everyone. By honoring Kurtz and being kind to him – by sparing his loved ones from further pain – Marlow stops the endless cycle, and he faces the shadow: he faces the truth. He is, of course, a changed man. Like so many who set out with a bang to conquer the Congo, Marlow too came close to defeat; he too came close to escaping with a whimper, allowing the Congo to beat him, allowing the truth to break the illusion he once held. Yet Marlow is somehow different from all the rest who succumb to the horrors of the Belgian Congo, because if anything, he is able to come back. He is able to conquer his sickness, an occurrence symbolic of the Congo experience as a whole, and return home.
Just as the novella does, so too does Marlow’s story end, and so too does the poem end: “For Thine is / Life is / For Thine is the…” There is no answer. There is no word that can be placed at the end of those lines that will complete the stanza, for there is no one outcome. The Congo is a villa of “death’s twilight kingdom,” and it is the home to so much darkness that one cannot avoid it. Yet what one decides to do with the darkness once he realizes it – and realization is the crest of darkness – is what determines whether the Congo is the kingdom, or whether “Thine is the kingdom.”