The imagery of the hollow men, stuffed, and head filled with straw stood out to me. This concept of an empty man and pointless people repeats itself, as well as objects usually filled with vitality being dead. This stood out to me specifically not only because, not only is it central to the poem (It is titled "The Hollow Men"), but it connects to many high school students. At least with myself and many of my friends, we often don't try to learn to gain lessons, and while we love learning, we often find ourselves trying to find the easiest path to get an A, even if it means having our minds filled with data that would otherwise be pointless to us, the straw of which Eliot speaks, and will burn out of existence when we no longer need it. The Hollow Men speaks to several aspects of myself and others, and the idea of stuffing gives into the idea of stuffing yourself with food, but more broadly, fleeting pleasures to escape any voids in our lives. The idea that our dried voices are meaningless is relatable. If you chose a conversation at random between me and my friends, there would be a pretty good chance that we would be talking about school-related tests, quizzes, whatever, which we will probably have forgotten a few days after it is over that we ever took. While many of our conversations do delve into meaningful topics, almost all have at least have some sort of filler about school or some test. Also, small talk in a way goes into this. People will stand around talking about topics they do not care about since it is social convention, and while it can be a good way to get a conversation going, Like Mia in Pulp Fiction said, "That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the f*** up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence."
Great Gatsby comes to mind, particularly the filling of the hollow shell. Alcohol was dominant in the 1920s and often people would fill themselves to forget the pain, often from WWI. Gatsby himself fills this shell with the desire for Daisy, which was his alcoholic substitute. The dead wasteland is reminiscent of not only the lost souls of this era, but the no-man's-land in WWI.