The Hollow Men in Popular Culture

The Hollow Men In Popular Culture

T. S. Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men", has had a profound effect on the Anglo-American cultural lexicon and—by a relatively recent extension—world culture since it was published in 1925. The references below range from American video games (the Halo series) to Japanese literature (the novels of Haruki Murakami).

Sheer variety of reference moves some of the questions concerning the poem's significance outside the traditional domain of literary criticism -- where Harold Bloom, for one, often half-laments Eliot's influence -- and into the much broader category of cultural studies. Here, its history has itself becomes an object for meditation in the work of many critics and artists, including, for instance, film essayist Chris Marker.

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