According to Billy Graham, “People have become so empty that they can’t even entertain themselves. They have to pay other people to amuse them, to make them laugh, to try to make them feel warm and happy and comfortable for a few minutes, to try to lose that awful, frightening, hollow feeling–that terrible, dreaded feeling of being lost and alone.” This ideal perfectly describes the wealthy characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby. Much like the hollow men in T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem, “The Hollow Men,” the rich people of the novel float through life, without any morals or ambition, completely ignoring reality and the world around them.
First, the wealthy characters in the novel are hollow in that they do not deal with reality, and are consumed in their own little world. This is evident in the book when Fitzgerald states “they were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald, 188). This shows the extent of their isolation from their surroundings. This seclusion from the rest of the world is shown when Daisy states “What’ll we plan? What do people plan?” (Fitzgerald 16). This shows that they are so segregated from society that they do not even consider themselves as “people,” and she must find out what it is that “people” do. This isolation is also clear when one considers the fact that their child is only mentioned twice in the entirety of the novel, showing that she is obviously not a very important part of their lives. Furthermore, even when they are conversing among themselves, these people are not even truly saying anything. This is evident when Nick first goes to meet Daisy and Tom when he gets to New York, and they merely small talk for a few hours without even truly communicating. Similar such characteristics are outlined in the poem when Eliot writes “Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless” (I. 5-7). The people Eliot refers to talk to each other, yet their conversations are pointless; these people, like Tom and Daisy, are so remote, that they cannot even have simple human interaction with those closest to them.
These same characters also have no purpose in life, and just sit around as they waste their lives away. Eliot’s poem illustrates how these people are like “shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion” (I.11-12). These paradoxes are examples of things that are not possible, and do not make sense; they also describe how the rich characters in Fitzgerald’s novel lack any purpose in their lives. This total absence of ambition or drive is shown when Daisy states how life is so hard and she is so tired when she is merely sitting on the couch doing nothing.
Furthermore, the fate of these rich characters is paralleled in the second canto of Eliot’s poem. First, Eliot mentions “Eyes I dare not meet in dreams/ In death’s dream kingdom/ These do not appear” (II. 1-3). This refers to the judgment day that these characters will eventually meet. These eyes, like the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg referred to in the novel are those of God. This is made blatantly clear in the novel: “he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous from the dissolving night. ‘God sees everything'” (Fitzgerald 167). Eliot next describes the wonders of heaven, which is the potential destination of these figures.
“There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.” (II, 4-10).
This description of a still-far-away heaven is there to show how wondrous a locale it is, which makes the following lines quite intriguing.
“Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom” (II, 11-20)
This portion of the poem is the most significant. The figures in the poem observe a beautiful heaven just out of reach, and instead of striving to reach it, they cower away, and choose to hide in disguises. These people do not want to be closer to Heaven; they would rather put on their disguises than face the eyes of God on Judgment Day, and the uncertainty of their future. This parallels the story perfectly because the rich characters in the book would rather hide and live in their fake “crowskin” and wear a “rat’s coat” in disguise than face reality. Once this fundamental ideal is understood, the reader can discover another clever metaphor hidden in the book. The wealthy characters in the novel live on egg shaped peninsulas called West Egg and East Egg. In other words, these characters live on eggs, and hide in these protective shells from the dangers of the real world. These beach shells serve as the protective skin that these wealthy characters choose to hide in rather than face the uncertainty of the real world. These eggs also serve as a symbol for the purgatory that these characters are in. They are in perpetual limbo, frozen out of fear, too afraid to venture outside, into the mainland which contains the two possible outcomes of their Judgment Day, Heaven and Hell. So, out of fear, they remain isolated and alone, and convince themselves that they are actually doing something worth while. Eliot also gives us these hints when he uses intense imagery with very negative connotations as descriptions for the disguises. Instead of referring to a cloak or a hood, he refers to graphic and gory images such as “rat’s coat” and “crowskin,” which reflect the cowardice of the act of hiding from your problems.
One of the possible ultimate outcomes of these wealthy characters, Hell, is described in the third canto. This reference to Hell is made clear in the when the poem states “This is the dead land” (III, 1). The parallel to Hell in Fitzgerald’s work is the valley of the ash. It is easy to see from Fitzgerald’s description of this area that it can be equated with Hell. He describes it as a “desolate area of land” where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens” (Fitzgerald 27). This correlation is further tied together with another excerpt from the poem: “Lips that would kiss/ Form prayers to broken stone.” (III, 12/13). This is a specific reference to two characters in the novel, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Myrtle Wilson, while not one of the rich characters, strives to be so, and often encourages Tom to divorce Daisy and marry her. She commits adultery with Tom against one of the few good people in the novel, her loving and kind hearted husband George Wilson. Here, in the valley of the ash, Myrtle is killed under the very eyes of God (Dr. Eckleburg) in ultimate punishment for the sins that she has committed. To George, Myrtle was the lips that would kiss, and after she died and he prayed for her, his prayers were made into broken stone when he discovered that she had in fact been murdered by Gatsby (at least in his mind). After the event George was shocked and appalled about the loss of his wife, and he could only cry “‘O my Ga-od! O my Ga-od!'” (Fitzgerald 146). Upon the revelation that she had been “murdered,” this kind old man became crazed and went on the rampage that eventually ended in Gatsby’s death. These situations show why the valley of the ash symbolizes the dreaded outcome of judgment day, Hell.
The other outcome in the judgment day faced by the wealthy characters in the novel is of course Heaven. In the book, Heaven is symbolized by the Midwest, where things were simpler and life was pure. In the stories of all of these rich characters, it was when things were going great in their lives. It was where Gatsby and Daisy had their love affair, where Gatsby was not absorbed in lies and dealing with the black market, and it was where Nick lived before he got involved in the silly games that these rich characters played. Thus, it was not surprising that at the end of the novel, Nick went back to the Midwest in order to go back to the simplicity of life, and to get away from the chaos.
In the fourth canto, the poem addresses an unfortunate characteristic of the wealthy hollow men (and women). Eliot describes these people as “Sightless, unless/ The eyes reappear” (IV, 10/11) and that this is “The hope only/ Of empty men.” (IV, 15-16). This means that the hollow rich characters merely sit around, lost and alone, waiting for a direction to be given to them by God. They want the eyes of God to reappear in order to tell them what their fate is, rather than going out and doing something about it. They shall just float through life until their fate has been determined for them.
Finally, the fifth canto portrays the fundamental difference between thinking of doing something, and actually going out and doing it. Such examples include the following:
“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow (V, 5-9).
Obviously, there is a huge difference between coming up with an idea, and actually making it into a reality. This fundamental difference between thinking and doing is the shadow. The shadow also represents the difference between making it into Heaven and going to Hell. In other words, just sitting around and not doing anything, as the Hollow Men and the wealthy characters in the novel do, will lead to a certain path to Hell. Yet, if a person actually does something, it will lead them to Heaven. Finally, Eliot finishes his poem with the lines “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper” (V, 30/31). The first line saying that this is the way the world ends refers to the fact that your actions will determine how your world ends, based on your actions in life. The final line was included to reveal two things. First, it shows that the ultimate decision on judgment day isn’t entirely made by God, and that it is in fact a culmination of all of the things a person has achieved in their life. So, the world does not end with one big bang of a decision made all at once, but slowly, over a lifetime of decisions, that ends with a whimper of a final declaration of your outcome. The second is that, particularly with these wealthy characters, and especially Gatsby himself, their whole lives they have been striving for wealth and all the material riches that they could possibly achieve, yet when their life ends they will certainly be unhappy because they are marching towards a goal of certain failure. There is no way that they can achieve all of their wildest dreams, because as you get richer, your dream expands and expands beyond your means. Thus, your life will not end with a big bang of your achievement, but will instead end with a whimper of sadness, desperation, and the loss of your dream, or really, the American Dream.
Clearly, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby had many parallels to T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men.” The Hollow Men discussed in Eliot’s work are embodied in Fitzgerald’s wealthy characters in his novel. These works both combine to show that the ultimate outcome of a person’s soul cannot be guaranteed by monetary worth or status. This goal can only be achieved by hard work and the determination to lead a good life, regardless of how rich or poor a person ultimately becomes. This is because no matter how much wealth a person can collect in their life, it could never possibly equal the wealth and riches of a joyous afterlife.
