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F. Scott Fitzgerald & T.S. Eliot Have the Voice of the Jazz Age
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F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with naming the Jazz Age and also is known as the voice of the Jazz Age. But he is not the only artist that had a voice and used it during this era. Another important literary figure from this period is T.S. Eliot. Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men” is very similar to Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby because they both show how the American Dream and human life has become corrupted because of the need for many materials. “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot is an attack on twentieth century society. Eliot describes contemporary life as a living hell on earth where humans are absent of relationships and physical contact. Eliot attacks modern society and says that humans are experiencing hell on earth because there is no communication, values, or thoughts. Eliot argues through his poem, that we are blind and deaf to society. In the first part of “The Hollow Men” T.S. Eliot portrays life with a dry and unfertile setting. Eliot believes that we have lost all the “juices” of life and that we are struggling to unite as a group because we are “broken” individuals. He says that our lives are “shape without form, shade without color, / paralyzed force, gesture without motion!” (lines 11-12). He is saying that life is plain, simple, and boring since we are physically “dry and mute” and our environment is as well. Eliot says we live”…indry grass/ (with) rats’ feet in over broken glass/ in our dry cellar” (lines 8-10) we are like rats who do the bare minimum in order to survive and we do not care if we get hurt in the process because we have no emotion or feeling. Eliot also says that we are going to die as “hollow” and “stuffed” people who are lost and confused. In the second part of the poem, Eliot explains “death’s dream kingdom” (line 20) as what life could be like in heaven. He believes that we cannot go here because we are cowards. This is because we hide ourselves, and, have lost all of our values. We can no longer tell right from wrong because we fail to experience life and we are lazy people who live life in order to merely survive. However, in death’s “dream kingdom” we are not blind or mute because”…the eyes are/sunlight on a broken column/ There, is a tree swinging/And voices are/in the wind’s singing…” (lines 22-26).
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