The Hollow Men

This is a poem by T.S. Eliot and I don't really know why, but I really enjoyed reading it. I read some websites that analyzed the piece. Some said it had to do with post-war Europe and the effects the Treat of Versailles had on the country, others mentioned the difficulty of hope on mankind, and some even mentioned that it has to do with Eliot's own failed marriage. However, what I like about poetry is it is less about what others think and more about what you personally glean from reading the words. Poetry is just so free that you can take away whatever you want, what currently is going on in your own situation, in your own life.

I think it means that if we live our lives without loving, living, and laughing (if we really don't enjoy what we have), we slowly become distant from the world around us. I especially like the ending:

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I think if we let our passions about life and our interactions with others die down, there will be nothing left to life. No real reason to live (or war for that matter). Then like it says the world won't end in a bang, but more like a pathetic wimper.

Below is the entire poem. Feel free to read and see what you think it means!

The Hollow Men
By: T.S. Eliot

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
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.

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

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Jing Jing Jing

So I'm kind of slow on the uptake, but I just wanted to express how awesome I think Jing is. I just downloaded it not too long ago (as you can see from my last post), and I can't really remember how I lived without it. It is so easy to use (and that's saying something, because despite the two months I have spent in this class, I still feel technologically impaired). It's just the simplest thing: just capture, save, and insert the image!

It's a great way to share images with others (especially when blogging!). I think this has really increased the accessibility of sharing information. Sharing pictures has always been a problem in my family. My dad lives in Montana so to send pictures I would usually just have to upload them individually and email them or even print them out and send them in the mail. New technology has given us the opportunity to send and share pictures through the internet. It's absolutely amazing to see how technology progresses so rapidly. I'm excited to see what they come up with in years to come!

Sound Cloud

In my last post I uploaded an audio file to my blog. This turned out to be a lot more tricky than I had anticipated. I tried uploading it directly from iTunes, but it wouldn't work. I then found this site, Sound Cloud, which is completely awesome so I will explain how I uploaded it step by step:

1. I imported the CD into my iTunes

2. I then converted the track to an mp3 format. To do that, follow these instructions:

• 1. Edit > Preferences
  2. Under the general tab, select "import settings"
  3. Change type to MP3, and select (192 kbps) for decent quality audio.
  4. Find the song you want to upload in your iTunes library (it must already be in iTunes) and right click it.
  5. Select 'Create MP3 Version'
  6. Wait for it to finish (it will say incomplete next to the title until it was done).
  7. Drag the completed file out of iTunes onto the desktop for convenient use elsewhere.

3. I then went to soundcloud.com and I uploaded the audio file (filling out all necessary details about the clip).Wait for the upload bar to finish.

 4. It will send a confirmation email to your address and from there you can follow the link to the uploaded file.

5. Select share on the upper left corner of the soundcloud editing pane, and copy the embed code.

6. Go back to the blogger edit post screen, and place the cursor where you want to insert the audio clip.

7. Click "Edit HTML" on the upper right of the edit post box, and paste the embed code you copied in step five.

8. Publish Post!

Apostasy Talk

As I was reading M. Russell Ballard's talk, "Using New Media to Support the work of the Church," it discussed the importance that new techonolgy plays in helping the growth of the Church. He always mentioned that all the technology leading up to the life of Joseph Smith aided in the Restoration of the Church and the publication of the Book of Mormon.

While on my mission, I listened to a talk (known as the "Apostasy Talk") by a Hyrum Smith (not Hyrum Smith the brother of Joseph), he address this. He explains how all things from the Apostasy lead up to the Restoration of the Gospel. It is one of the most incredible talks I have ever listened to. I have uploaded the entire talk (which is about 35 minutes). It is totally worth your time. You can listen to it on Sunday after church if you want.

Apostasy Talk by leeannelowry

A World Lit Only by Fire

I totally just learned how to use Prezi, and I must admit, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I hope you enjoy my book presentation that I made on "A World Lit Only by Fire" By: William Manchester.

A World Lit Only by Fire on Prezi

I taught my FHE group about how to use Prezi. It was pretty funny. They don't really like how it zooms in and out, a lot of them complained that they were getting headaches. I think I like it more than PowerPoint though. There's a lot more freedom to create and I think it's more fun to use. I hope you enjoy. 

Castles in the Air

I was just reading an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's masterpiece Walden. This is the best quote I have read in quite some time and has come at the most opportune time. It goes as follows:

"I learned this at least, by my experiment; that is one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with unexpected success. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will libe with the licence of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them...."


How incredibly wonderful! As a college student, I often feel that I'm being pushed down, forced to do this and then the next in a mindless act of lists entitles "to do;" however, after reading this, I feel a new sense of energy to follow my dreams, to do those things that I want to do, no matter how far off they are from the beaten path. What courage Thoreau must have had in leaving behind all he knew to start afresh in a small cabin by the lake. What incredible insights we would discover if we did this in our own lives. This is not to say that we should drop what we're doing and live by a pond, but we should shove aside those "worldly" things in our lives, clear our mind, and allow our imagination to think and discover the castles we have...then, do as Thoreau suggests and "put foundations under them..."!

And the Winner is:

The book my "mini-book club" and I have decided to read is:

A World Lit only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age. 

A world Lit Only by Fire deals with the technoligical stagnation that existed in the Middle Ages, and the occurences that jolted Erupoe into the  Renaissance. Manchester covers many aspects of this time period including the rise of humanism in the early days of the Renaissance and its triumph of secularism over piety. It looks like more than your average history book. I'm pretty excited. 

More info to come (after I read the book...)!

So Many Books, So Little Time

Here are a few books/works I'd be interested in reading:


Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
By: John Locke
This is one of Locke's most famous works. This essay talks about the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. He describes the mind as a blank slate (tabla rasa) that becomes filled through time and experience of life. Written during the Renaissance, Locke begins to open the curiosity and the minds of readers as to the inner working our human nature.



War and Peace (1869)
By: Leo Tolstoy
This book depicts the events leading up to Napolean's invasion of Russia and the impact that it had on the Tsarist society at the time, seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families.






U.S. Constitution (1787)
By: James Madison
The US Constituion is the framework for the organization of the United States Government. It is the oldest written constitution still in use by any nation in the world, and has been used to frame many other democratic nations' constitutions around the world.



Dracula (1897)
By: Bram Stoker
This timeless classic takes place in Transylvania at the castle of Count Dracula. Needing legal advice for a real estate translaction, Jonathan Harker is invited to the Castle where he soon finds himself a prisoner, and begins to peice together the disquieting facets of Dracula's nocturnal life.

Hard Times

Hard Times, written by Charles Dickens in 1854, allows readers to understand the central feel of nineteenth-century England.  This book was written during the Industrial Revolution, in which major cultural and socioeconomic changes were beginning to take place.  I found this to be a very interesting read and would like to suggest some major themes of the novel that help us better understand this Industrial Revolution and changes of this time:


It appears that Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century England’s overzealous adoption of industrialization was threatening to turn human beings into machines by thwarting the development of their own emotions and imaginations. One of the main characters, Mr. Gradgrind, is evidence of this. Mr. Gradgrind is a wealthy man who has a unique philosophy that centers on rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He teaches this philosophy to his two children, Louisa and Tom, as well as to the school children at a local school he founded.  The mechanizing effects of industrialization are compounded by Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of rational self-interest. Mr. Gradgrind believes that human nature can be measured, quantified, and governed entirely by rational rules. However, we learn that this way of thinking presents many dilemmas. 


Towards the end of the play, Louisa, who has had many problems because of her upbringing from her emotionless father, finally breaks down and tells him that he is the reason of her unhappiness all these years. Mr. Gradgrind finally reazlies what he has done, not only to Louisa, but to himself. 


Dickens’s primary goal in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting that without compassion and imagination, life would be unbearable. This truly is the case, and it reminds me of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without a sense of purpose and peace that God's plan has for us, life would be unbearable and purposeless. We shouldn't go about our lives as though we are emotionless zombies, but part of life is fulfilling these roles as compassionate brothers, mothers, neighbors, and friends. Just as Nephi states, "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).