Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate a single poem of T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men," with the use of the modern analytical technique. By comparison of the poem with Eliot’s critical theory, particularly that of the "objective correlative," as worked out in his essay, "Hamlet and His Problem^" and developed in many other places in his essays; e.g., "Tradition and the Individual Talent," we hope to demonstrate the significance of the poem as interpreted, first, by a strict mechanistic theory; and then, as interpreted by the humanistic theory of St. Thomas Aquinas in Jacques Maritain's interpretation of St. Thomas. Thus both this poem and Eliot's critical doctrine will be subjected to a Thomistic critique. And by this method we hope to suggest an approach toward the understanding and teaching of all of Eliot's poetry—indeed, all symbolic poetry.