"Not with a Bang Not with a Bang was a short-lived British television sitcom produced by LWT for ITV in 1990. It ran for seven episodes, each 30 minutes long. The show was a dark science fiction comedy, focusing on the end of the human race on Earth. The title comes from the last line of T. S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men """"not with a bang, but a whimper"""". The pilot episode of Not with a Bang begins with a spoof episode of the iconic BBC show Tomorrow's World, (which is also a nod to the opening titles of"
"The Hollow Men ""The Hollow Men"" (1925) is a poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognized to be concerned most with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised: compare ""Gerontion""), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, and, as some critics argue, Eliot's own failed marriage (Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot might have been having an affair with Bertrand Russell). The poem is divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines of which the last four are ""probably the most quoted lines of"
"the last four lines of the poem are ""probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English."" The sheer variety of references moves some of the questions concerning the poem's significance outside the traditional domain of literary criticism and into the much broader category of cultural studies. Examples of such influences include: The Hollow Men ""The Hollow Men"" (1925) is a poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognized to be concerned most with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot"
"War I. The final stanza may be the most quoted of all of Eliot's poetry: When asked if he would write these lines again, Eliot responded with a 'no': One reason is that while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone's mind. Another is that he is not sure the world will end with either. People whose houses were bombed have told him they don't remember hearing anything. Other significant references include the Lord's Prayer, Shakespeare's ""Julius Caesar"", and Conrad's ""An Outcast of the Islands"" (""Life is very long""). The poem was"
"the poem is in agitation and speaks to the reader directly. His revelations are accidental and born out of his emotional distress. As with other works, Eliot chooses an elderly speaker – someone who is world-weary, reflective, and sad (cf. ""The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"", ""Gerontion"", the Tiresias narrator of ""The Waste Land"", and possibly the narrator of ""The Hollow Men""). His narrator in this poem is a witness to historical change who seeks to rise above his historical moment, a man who, despite material wealth and prestige, has lost his spiritual bearings. The poem has a number"
"""The Waste Land"" served as an expression of disillusionment after World War I, even though Eliot never accepted this interpretation. World War II itself has a direct mention in only a few of Eliot's writings. However, World War II does affect the poem, especially with the disruption caused by the war being reflected within the poem as a disruption of nature and heaven. The poem describes society in ways similar to ""The Waste Land"", especially with its emphasis on death and dying. The place is connected to where Eliot's family originates, and, as such, is also the place where his"
"any 20th-century poet writing in English"". Eliot’s characters often undergo a journey - either physical or spiritual or both. ""The Hollow Men"" seems to follow the otherworldly journey of the spiritually dead. These “hollow men” have the realization, humility and acknowledgement of their guilt and their status as broken, lost souls. The “hollow men” fail to transform their motions into actions, conception to creation, desire to fulfillment. This awareness of the split between thought and action coupled with their awareness of “death’s various kingdoms” and acute diagnosis of their hollowness, makes it hard for them to go forward and break"
"on October 31, which particularly in the United States were conflated with Guy Fawkes’ celebrations over the course of the 19th Century. Some critics read the poem as told from three perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death's kingdoms (""death's dream kingdom"", ""death's twilight kingdom"", and ""death's other kingdom""). Eliot describes how we, the living, wish to be seen by ""Those who have crossed/With direct eyes [...] not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men."" The image of eyes figures prominently in the poem, notably in one of Eliot's"
"an emphasis on the present moment as being the only time period that really matters, because the past cannot be changed and the future is unknown. The poem emphasizes that memory must be abandoned to understand the current world, and humans must realize that the universe is based on order. The poem also describes that although consciousness cannot be bound within time, humans cannot actually escape from time on their own. The scene beneath London is filled with the time-bound people who are similar to the spiritually empty populace of ""The Hollow Men""; they are empty because they do not"
"on the town, before rain and winds start. Later, he realizes one other possibility. In case he is right, they find appropriate supplies and seek refuge from the coming natural disasters in Leslie's high-rise apartment. The second possibility turns out to be correct: the Earth has ""merely"" been struck by an enormous solar flare—by far the worst disaster in human history, with most (if not all) people in the Eastern Hemisphere presumed dead, but humans in the Americas have a chance of surviving the cataclysm. The vaporized seawater leads to torrential rains, hurricanes and floods. The story ends at the"
"global peace. At the very moment the other nations of the world finish acceding to his ""covenant"" of world disarmament, Hammond, his supposed divine mission completed, suffers a fatal stroke which also seems to be divinely attributable (again a breeze through a closed window), and the story ends. Despite revoking the Constitution and all the other actions he has taken, Hammond is not portrayed as the villain of the piece, but rather as the one who ""solves all of the nation's problems"", ""bringing peace to the country and the world,"" and is universally acclaimed ""one of the greatest presidents who"
"never abandoned him, and had simply died without leaving any trace. He tells K. Roth that there is no ""equation for life"", and therefore no monologue, and that the meaning of life was merely to live to your full potential. With his time drawing near, K. Roth has a moment of self-awareness, stating that his life was meaningless, and that he was a ""stupid, drunk, scared, dying man"". With encouragement from his father, K. Roth concludes his wake with a song and dance. With the last words of the song, K. Roth's disease takes effect, and he collapses into an"
"passes through the seasons from winter — “it snowed from the north” — to spring — “groves assume blossoms” — and to summer — “the cuckoo forebodes, or forewarns”. Then the speaker again shifts, this time not in tone, but in subject matter. The sea is no longer explicitly mentioned; instead the speaker preaches about steering a steadfast path to heaven. He asserts that “earthly happiness will not endure"", that men must oppose “the devil with brave deeds”, and that earthly wealth cannot travel to the afterlife nor can it benefit the soul after a man's death. The poem ends"
"of pure energy who live in space) who made a bet with another pupil. The story concludes with the same two beings making another bet to put everything back the way it was with another minuscule alteration, with the inevitable consequence that the world will end in nuclear holocaust. Asimov comments that the last section of the story was put in as an afterthought. Despite the original happy ending, Asimov was not satisfied, because the numerologist had not been accounted for. So he put in the last part to explain the numerologist, giving the story a sad ending after all."
"""The Waste Land""."" It is Eliot's major poem of the late 1920s. Similar to Eliot's other works, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage. Allen Tate perceived a shift in Eliot's method, writing, ""The mythologies disappear altogether in ""The Hollow Men""."" This is a striking claim for a poem as indebted to Dante as anything else in Eliot's early work, to say little of the modern English mythology—the ""Old Guy Fawkes"" of the Gunpowder Plot—or the colonial and agrarian mythos of"
"family will symbolically end. In the second part of the poem, nature is experiencing disorder, and it is suggested that humans too may burn, and also that reason, knowledge, and science cannot save people. The errors of our past become the reasons for war and conflict and we need to become humble in order to escape the destruction. However, darkness consumes the rulers of the world and society. This is, in part, due to Adam's fall, and the resulting concept of original sin. Christ is our savior and we need to seek redemption to overcome our human failings. Eliot states"
"will end up broken upon rocks. We are restrained by time, but the Annunciation gave mankind hope that it will be able to escape. This hope is not part of the present. What we must do is understand the patterns found within the past in order to see that there is meaning to be found. This meaning allows one to experience eternity through moments of revelation. ""Little Gidding"" was started after ""The Dry Salvages"" but was delayed because of Eliot's declining health and his dissatisfaction with early drafts of the poem. Eliot was unable to finish the poem until September"
"but death is death no matter how it happens. The poem moves on to other death imagery and at time becomes a prayer to the bomb. The speaker offers to bring mythological roses, a gesture that evokes an image of a suitor at the door. The other suitors courting the bomb include Oppenheimer and Einstein, scientists who are responsible for the creation of the bomb. He concludes the poem with the idea that more bombs will be made ""and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires/ fierce with moustaches of gold"" (lines 87–8). Christine Hoff Kraemer states the idea succinctly,"
"winds may serve for fort. 32 So he that faileth in this world of pleasure, Feeding on sweets, that never bit of th’ sowre, That’s full of friends, of honour and of treasure, Fond fool, he takes this earth ev’n for heav’ns bower, But sad affliction comes and makes him see Here’s neither honour, wealth, nor safety; Only above is found all with security. 33 O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, That draws oblivions curtains over kings, Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, Their names without a Record are forgot, Their parts, their ports, their pomp’s all"
"and closed it up so that he should never more trouble the people of the earth. John's narration returns to the stillness of heaven, the end of all earthly time, and tells that seven angels appear and are given trumpets. Each sounding signifies great sorrows upon the world and its people. The soloists announce the woes, building from alto through to quartet: a rain of blood and fire (punishment for the sins of mankind, responds the chorus); a glowing mountain appears in the sea, and all ships founder, and all lives are lost in the sea and the water is"
"the poem moves from a garden to the London underground where technology dominates. Those who cling to technology and reason are unable to understand the universe or the Logos (""the Word"", or Christ). The underworld is replaced by a churchyard and a discussion of death. This, in turn, becomes a discussion of timelessness and eternity, which ends the poem. Eliot believed that ""Burnt Norton"" could benefit society. The poem's narration reflects on how humankind is affected by Original Sin, that they can follow the paths of either good or evil, and that they can atone for their sins. To help"
"""This indeed is... the very essence of the Universal poetry, a lyric of the world's spinal chord,"" Gorky reportedly said, commenting on the poem's title. The poet rises his ""skull filled with verses,"" starting what he anticipates to be his ""final concert"" before finishing his life with ""a bullet for a dot."". He curses his beloved (wondering ""what heavenly Hoffmann might have invented you, the vile one""), then blames God for bringing to Earth this woman, a devil in disguise. Visiting her at home, he implores Lilya to leave her ageing husband, then, horrified by her aloof coldness, threatens again"
"body is lost) nor fully transcendent (since he remains on earth)."" With an ambiguous ending, the poem does not just end with a death, but instead, it just begins. The monody clearly ends with a death and an absolute end but also moves forward and comes full circle because it takes a look back at the pastoral world left behind making the ambivalence of the end a mixture of creation and destruction. Nonetheless ""thy large recompense"" also has a double meaning. As Paul Alpers states, Lycidias' gratitude in heaven is a payment for his loss. The word ""thy"" is both"
"gravitational-perturbation problems. Before reaching the bottom, he dies of heart failure. ""Epilogue""<br> A short epilogue titled ""Kalidasa's Triumph"" envisages Earth about fifteen hundred years later. The sun has cooled and Earth, slowly being covered by permafrost, is devoid of life except for the bottom of the ocean; humans now live on the terraformed inner planets as well as on Mars. Several space elevators lead to a giant ""circumterran"" space station that encircles the planet at geostationary altitude. The analogy with a wheel is evident: the space station itself is the wheel rim, Earth is the axle, and the six equidistant"
"And mock you with me after I am gone. </poem> The couplet tie at the end of the sonnet ""sums up the poem: look, mourn (moan), world"". By the couplet ""[the speaker] is gone, no longer corporeal at all."" While the quatrains lead up to a climax in quatrain 3, the couplet suggests a point, a succinct conclusion. According to Atkins, in the couplet ""The primary notion is that the world will judge the poet's shortcoming only too well,"" as clarified by Tucker [1924]. After the speaker's urge for the beloved not to mourn him, one might expect several different"
"previously remarked, Eliot was capable of expressing the most intense moments of experience, but had little capacity for sustained structure."" An early critic, D. W. Harding, viewed the poem as being part of a new concept within poetry. Similarly, Edwin Muir saw that the poem had new aspects to it and felt that there was beauty in the poem similar to that in ""The Hollow Men"". Peter Quennell agreed and described the poem as ""a new and remarkably accomplished poem"" featuring ""uncommon rhythmic virtuosity"". Marianne Moore stated that it was ""a new poem which is concerned with the thought of"
"allow humanity to break free from the burden of time. As Russell Kirk explains: ""That end, for those who apprehend a reality superior to 'birth, copulation, and death'—a reality transcending the rhythms of physical nature—is to know God and enjoy Him forever."" Family and family history also plays an important role in the poem. Eliot found information on his family from ""Sketch of the Eliot Family"", which described how Eliot's family lived in East Coker for 200 years. When Andrew Eliott left, he disrupted the family history. Similarly, Eliot broke from his own family when he travelled away from his"
"have experienced a series of detailed gruesome acts, such as having “heavenly visions of people, by the thousands, dying in flames”. This digression of imagery is broken off by an invitation to apply for the position. The subject is dehumanized further by requiring a new race of men to fight who possess no skill, ambition, intelligence, or character. The poem closes with a final promotion and stating “Wages: ""Death""” The job advertisement structuring of the poem lends itself to a further emotional detachment from the act of killing. The speakerless listing of “AD,” such as in lines 9 and 10,"
"transforming the whole world at once... We must keep alive aspirations which can remain valid throughout the longest and darkest period of universal calamity and degradation."" The poem also relied on the war as a way to connect to Eliot's idea that there was a united humanity. In particular, Stephen Spender claimed that ""the war modified [Eliot's] attitude by convincing him that there was a Western cause to be positively defended. And after the war there was a Germany to be brought back within the Western tradition"". The poem served as a sort of opposite to the popular idea that"
"ends with a coda in A major. Some credit this quartet as T. S. Eliot's impetus to write the ""Four Quartets""; certainly he was recorded in a letter to Stephen Spender as having a copy of the A-minor quartet on the gramophone: 'I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.' Aldous Huxley"
"Dagor Dagorath The Dagor Dagorath (Sindarin for ""Battle of Battles"") is a fictional battle described in the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien. As Tolkien's works were conceived as a fictional ""forgotten history"" of the world, the Dagor Dagorath represents the coming End of the World, and is often referred to as simply ""The End"". As Tolkien originally wrote it, ""The Silmarillion"" ends with a prophecy by Mandos about the end of the world. The published ""Silmarillion"" ends instead with the last paragraph of Valaquenta. This was because Tolkien had abandoned the idea of the ""second prophecy of Mandos"", and"
"with a penetrating scrutiny which distance, to a great extent, can not evade... To his neighbor in the natural state he turns to give expression to his visions, but finds that to him the symbols which convey the apocalypse to his own mind are meaningless, because, in our ordinary life, the thoughts which they convey have no existence; their two planes are utterly different.” Still, he made the attempt, trying on the one hand to make a moral or practical point that “the soul withers and sinks from its growth toward the true end of its being beneath the dominance"
"the ending. The novel ends with Noÿs and Harlan both deciding that the suppression of spaceflight by ""Eternity"" is not in the interest of humankind, and the two live ""happily ever after"". In the Soviet film the ending takes place in the mid-1980s Germany rather than 1932 Los Angeles. Noÿs never fully describes why she wants ""Eternity"" destroyed, but in the middle of the movie, before her true identity is revealed, she gives some idea. Harlan yells at her that he is but a pawn in things and storms off, and there is a strong implication that he and Noÿs"