What mood or emotional affect is conveyed by imagery using the words dried and dry in lines 5-10 How does it convey a lack of passion emotion or excitement in the lives of The Hollow Men by T S Eliot?

Answer 1

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

The Hollow Men is really about people who are spiritually dead though physically alive. Their heads are stuffed with straw which is also "dry". Dryness refers to deadness, emptiness, barrenness; the mood is bleak and empty, soulless. The idea is that things that are dry or dried are neither relevant or meaningful- while not literally dead they might as well be, so although they may speak, the words are empty and hollow because they have not found spirituality, God, eternal life. Often a desire for spirituality is spoken of as a thirst, and God as flowing water. Water is necessary to physical life just as God is necessary, says Eliot, to a meaningful and rich life.

We are hollow and dried out without God who parches our thirst & gives us eternal life. The dryness is an extended metaphor to show what man is like without God which is dead metaphorically & also eventually physically. The hollow men's voices, they have nothing to say that matters. The hollow men may seem like living men just dried grass swaying in the wind seems alive at first glance but without the water, the true source of life which is God, the grass ceases to grow.

The mice walk toward a cellar (where food & wine is often stored) but despite this quest to live, to satisfy their senses, their march is meaningless because their desire for worldly pleasures is so strong they don't see the dangers. The short version is that the mood is bleak and depressing. Things that are dry are dead just as man is without spirituality or God in their life. This theme can be seen in much of T.S. Eliott's later works including of course The Wasteland.

From another post, "The image of eyes figures prominently in the poem, notably in one of Eliot's most famous lines "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams". Such eyes are also generally accepted to be in reference to Dante's Beatrice "