In "The Hollow Men" there is a conflict between an intense longing for a state of edenic purity and the contradictory search for a more lasting form of order through denial and alienation. It can be observed that "The Hollow Men" expresses the depths of Eliot's despair, but the poet in a sense chooses despair as the only acceptable alternative to the false existence of the unthinking inhabitants of the waste land.
The despair of "The Hollow Men" is controlled by intellectual principles, in the way the poem consciously evaluates experience in abstract terms, distinguishes between opposing s…
