Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles, hopelessness, religious conversion, redemption and, some critics argue, his failing marriage with Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot.

Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English".

[6] Certain quotes from the poem such as "headpiece filled with straw" and "in our dry cellar"[2] seem to be references to the Gunpowder Plot.

Their shame is seen in lines like "[...] eyes I dare not meet in dreams [...]" calling themselves "[...] sightless [...]" and that that "[...] [death is] the only hope of empty men [...]".

[2] The "hollow men" fail to transform their motions into actions, conception to creation, desire to fulfillment.

Eliot reprises this moment in his poem as the hollow men watch "[...] those who have crossed with direct eyes, to death's other kingdom [...]".

"[8] Mort Sahl (circa 1962) misquoted the lines as a commentary on modern marriage: "This is the way her world ends, not with a whim but with a banker".