Critique

Tragedy of our Modern Era.

It’s astonishing how a poem studied in Grade 7 Captures it so well

Photo by Mubariz Mehdizadeh on Unsplash

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.

I first read this poem by T.S. Eliot in grade 7, and at that time, even though I understood the poem as our teacher explained it — simplifying its message and presenting it in a way that a grade 7 student could grasp — I didn’t fully appreciate what a…