These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: We are the hollow men

and they woad read it with the same mild interest with which they read the rhymed advertisement for razor blades, wondering what on earth the manufacturers will be up to next. Some of them even carry identity cards -force of habit- that would tell you precisely who they are and where they live. / They have aims, these men, some of them very distant aims: a new car in three years, a house at Surbiton in five; but an aim is not an ideal. They are not play-actors. They change their shirts every day, but never their conception of themselves... These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s Verdict. They are quite contented in prison- caged animals who have never known freedom; but it is a prison all the same. And the Outsider? He is in prison too: nearly every Outsider has told so in a different language; ‘’but he knows’’. His desire is to escape.

Chapter Six, The Question of Identity