View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

1. With what are the "tattered arras" woven in Part I of "East Coker"?

2. Where, according to the speaker in the third part of "East Coker," do they "all go into"?

3. To what agony do the "Whisper of running streams" and "The laughter in the garden" point, according to Part III of "East Coker"?

4. Of what world's inoperancy does the poem's narrator speak of in "Burnt Norton," Part III?

5. What does the speaker of East Coker parallel with "death" in the final lines of Part I of "East Coker"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is a possible interpretation of the fourth part of "Burnt Norton"?

2. What is meant in the lines, "But to what purpose... I do not know," in the first part of "Burnt Norton"?

3. Why does the speaker find "only a limited value / In the knowledge derived from experience" in Part II of "East Coker"?

4. What is signified by the statement "Distracted from distraction by distraction" in "Burnt Norton"'s third part?

5. What does it mean to say, as the speaker does in the final line of Part II of "Burnt Norton," that "Only through time time is conquered"?

6. What is an interpretative possibility for the scene the speaker describes in the open field in the first part of "East Coker"?

7. What is meant by the "intolerable wrestled / With words and meanings" in the second part of "East Coker"?

8. What is meant in "Burnt Norton"'s first part by "What might have been... a world of speculation," lines 6-8?

9. What does the speaker mean in Part II of "Burnt Norton" when he states at the still point of the turning world, "there the dance is, / But neither arrest nor movement"?

10. What does the speaker mean by saying in Part V of "Burnt Norton" that love is caught "in the form of limitation"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Compose an expository essay on the nature of poetic imagery, using Eliot's Four Quartets as an example. What is imagery? What is the purpose of imagery? How is imagery commonly used in poetry? What are some specific examples of poetic images? What are metaphorical images? What are some examples of metaphorical images in The Four Quartets? What are the literal significations of such images? What are their non-literal significations? How does one interpret their meaning? How are they important for interpretation of the meaning of the poem? What do they uniquely contribute to the poem?

Essay Topic 2

Part V of "The Dry Salvages" sees the speaker discuss the essential, inherent need of human persons for faith. Analyze this discussion in an essay both expository and critical. What is faith? Why is faith important? What sort of things do human persons ordinarily seek as objects of faith? Why do people seek this faith? Why, in the estimation of the speaker, are these common objects and common faiths unsatisfactory? What sort of faith is satisfactory? In what does this sort of faith consist? Who possesses this faith? What does this indicate about the nature of faith? What does this indicate about the nature of the human person in regards to faith and fulfillment?

Essay Topic 3

Pat III of "East Coker" is eminently concerned with man's feelings of anxiety in the modern world, particularly as he is left with a sense of being conscious of nothing, or the content of the things of which he is conscious being essentially nothing. Examine this prevalence of anxiety as it is presented in the poem. What is anxiety? What does anxiety do to a person? In the face of what is man made anxious? Why does he have these feelings of anxiety? What does this indicate about the nature of the human person? What does this indicate about the nature of the things with which man regularly occupies himself in the world? How is this significant to the meaning of the poem as a whole? How is it significant to the whole of The Four Quartets?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,226 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample