Symbolic amplification of The Hollow Men: An essay on the void

Abstract

This article deals with the symbolic amplification of the poem The Hollow Men, by T. S. Eliot. The text, written in the context of the modernist movement, is one of the most cited of the twentieth century’s literature and reflects the importance of Eliot in the formation of the “spirit of the age.” Using Analytical Psychology and Symbolic Psychology as a theoretical basis, we sought to amplify the emerging images of the poem and to analyze them in the Jungian perspective. Among the emerging symbols of the text, the psychic emptying of the twentieth-century man stands out. We assume, based on the course of the poem, that this void is a result of the energetic drainage promoted by the polarized dynamics of the matriarchal and patriarchal archetypes throughout history. We conclude with the hypothesis that only the communion of both archetypes, through otherness, can reverse the process of emptying.