"We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind."
"Obviously, when Eliot uses words such as hollow, dried, and broken to describe the hollow men, he doesn't mean it literally - it is always a metaphor when poets use words in order to convey a message. So here, when he uses those words, he means that <span>the lives of hollow men are empty - void of spirituality or meaning.
</span>He doesn't refer to them gathering supplies, being damaged by the wind, or not having money - he is referring to their empty lives in general."
They support them beacuse when they need omething for trade they demand the trade for a another trade in \\