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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. "Over the asphalt where no other sound was," what does the speaker of Part II of "Little Gidding" hear?

2. Between what are the "children in the apple-tree... heard, half-heard" in the last part of "Little Gidding"?

3. The "time" which the speaker mentions in Part I of "The Dry Salvages" is older than "time counted by" what?

4. What is the answer to the question in Part IV of "Little Gidding," "Who then devised the torment"?

5. The speaker in the "The Dry Salvages"'s third part, enjoins his auditor to consider the future and the past with what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is meant by the speaker's interlocutor's phrase that "next year's words await another voice" in Part II of "Little Gidding"?

2. What is meant in Part III of "Little Gidding" by "not less of love but expanding / Of love beyond desire, and so liberation / From the future as well as the past"?

3. What is meant in Part III of "Little Gidding" by "We cannot revive old factions / We cannot restore old policies / Or follow an antique drum"?

4. What is the purpose of the lines in Part V of "The Dry Salvages" from "To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits," to "Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road"?

5. Explain what is meant by the paradoxical statement in Part V of "The Dry Salvages," "music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all."

6. What is meant by saying in the final part of "Little Gidding" that "history is a pattern / Of timeless moments"?

7. What is signified by the statement, in the final part of "Little Gidding," that "the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time"?

8. What is significant about the speaker's discussion of the strangeness of the sea in relation to man, in Part I of "The Dry Salvages"?

9. How is "Time the destroyer" also "time the preserver," as stated in Part II of "The Dry Salvages"?

10. What characterizes the "gifts reserved for age" which the interlocutor of Part II of "Little Gidding" describes to the poem's speaker?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Each of The Four Quartets is both united to the others and yet distinct with a complete meaning unto itself. Discuss the principal themes in "Burnt Norton," including time, the past, stillness, motion, and pattern, indicating the ways in which they are unified and present a coherent thought. How are these themes presented in the poem? What unites them? How are they, as a coherent whole, related to the other poems in the work? What is the significance of these relations? How do they help to unveil the overall meaning of "Burnt Norton"? How does this overall meaning contribute to interpretation of the whole work?

Essay Topic 2

One of the principal themes in the final part of "Burnt Norton" is the relationship between words, music, and pattern and form. Analyze this relationship in a thoroughly developed critical essay. In what does the relationship consist? How is the relationship significant? What are some instances of the way in which the relationship exists? Can any words or music exist without pattern and form? How does form enable words and music to "reach / The stillness"? What does this imply about the nature of pattern and form? What does it reveal about the natures of music and words?

Essay Topic 3

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?

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