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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What in "Morning at the Window" "hovers in the air" and "vanishes along the level of the roofs"?

2. Whom does the speaker claim is inane in "Conversation Galante"?

3. What was the last name of "Cousin Nancy"?

4. To where do the speakers of the "Journey of the Magi" come in the second stanza?

5. To whom does the speaker hand a copy of the "Boston Evening Transcript"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What evidently characterizes the woman in "Hysteria"?

2. What is a possible interpretation of the line, "Teach us to care and not to care" in "Ash-Wednesday"?

3. What is a possible interpretation of the last two lines of "Whispers of Immortality", "But our lot crawls between dry ribs / To keep our metaphysics warm"?

4. What is the significance of the lion made tame in the final stanza of "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar"?

5. What is a possible interpretation of the "notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing" described near the end of the "Preludes"?

6. What is implied by stating in "The Hippopotamus" that the "True Church need never stir / To gather in its dividends"?

7. What is the apparent distinction between the two speakers in "Conversation Galante"?

8. What is the meaning of the phrase in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" , "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"?

9. Why does the speaker not want Pipit in Heaven in "A Cooking Egg"?

10. What is the tone of the speaker in "Morning at the Window" and why?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In "Choruses from 'The Rock'", it is postulated that man without the Church at the center of his life is lost. Analyze this claim in a critical essay that evaluates the messages put forth in all ten of the choruses. What is the Church itself? What does the Church provide man that the rest of the world cannot? What happens to the rest of the world, particularly insofar as men interact with it, if men put the Church at the center of their lives? What does this indicate about the nature of humanity, at least in the way that Eliot perceives it and portrays it in "Choruses from 'The Rock'"?

Essay Topic 2

Along with "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" is often considered a vivid description of the bleariness of hell on earth. Evaluate this interpretation in a critical and analytical essay. What are the images put forth in "The Hollow Men"? Who are the speakers? What is significant about the speakers' descriptions of themselves? What coherence is to be found in the poem's five parts? What is said in each individual part? How does each part corroborate the interpretation of the whole? What is the significance of the failed attempt to pray in the final part? What is the significance of the way the world is said to end for the Hollow Men?

Essay Topic 3

The central theme of the last of Eliot's "Four Quartets", "Little Gidding," is fallen man's redemption. Analyze this theme as it is presented in "little Gidding." Why does man need redemption? From what is man redeemed? How does redemption come to man? What is the poetic imagery that Eliot uses to describe this need for redemption, that from which man is redeemed, and that by which he is redeemed? What does this need for redemption reveal about human nature? What does the manner of redemption reveal both about human nature and about the Divine, according to Eliot's portrayal?

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