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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. Where does the "golden vision" reappear in "Eyes that last I saw in tears"?

2. Across what river does the "camp fire shake with alien spears" in "The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?

3. Which of the following is NOT an attitude towards Christmas which the speaker of "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees" states may be ignored?

4. In "A Note on War Poetry," what two forces are "beyond control by experiment"?

5. Of what does the first coming remind "us" in "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is implied about the owner of the eyes about whom the speaker is talking in "Eyes that last I saw in tears"?

2. For what is the ship in "Marina" a symbolic signifier?

3. How was the speaker awoken in "The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?

4. What is the significance of the final landscape, "Cape Ann"?

5. What is the nature of the speakers "affliction" in "Eyes that last I saw in tears"?

6. What is a possible interpretation of the use of the phrase "In my beginning is my end" and its inversion, "In my end is my beginning" at the beginning and end of "East Coker"?

7. What characterizes the metaphors used as description of the old man bearing the "tooth of wit" in "Lines for an Old Man"?

8. What is the overall condition of true lovers described in "A Dedication to My Wife"?

9. How is the "Mr. Eliot" of the "Five-Finger Exercises" satirized?

10. What is the apparent distinction between the attitude towards Christmas of the child and the childish in "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Much of Eliot's poetry, particularly in the periods between 1925-1930, is considered to be related to the process of man's conversion from atheism to Christianity. Using several of Eliot's poems from this six year period, discuss the nature of this process in an analytical essay of careful consideration. What is a conversion? What sorts of things influence a man's conversion? How are these things described in Eliot's poems? What do such influential things offer that the rest of the world cannot? Why is such a conversion nonetheless difficult to make?

Essay Topic 2

A persistent theme throughout Eliot's later poetry, from "Ash-Wednesday" onwards, is the power of faith in the decaying world, which is the theme of Eliot's earlier poetry. Provide your own critical analysis of this theme, drawing upon texts from several of Eliot's poems. What is the essential nature of the world around man as described in Eliot's poems? How does modernity contribute to this nature? What is there for man to find in the modern world? In contradistinction, what is found in faith? How does faith contradict the nature of the modern world? What is described as lacking in Eliot's early poems but found in a different way in his later poems?

Essay Topic 3

In the third part of "Four Quartets - Burnt Norton" is a line which reads, "Distracted from distraction by distraction." This line has often been quoted in reference to the condition of the modern world. Evaluate the meaning of this statement, within the context of both the particular section in which it is found, the poem in which it is a part, and the society which it describes, in a well-thought-out analytical essay. What are man's distractions? Why is he distracted from them? How is man distracted in modernity? What sort of things distract him? How is this idea fleshed out in the third part of "Burnt Norton"? How is it further fleshed out in the poem as a whole? What does this distracted condition indicate about human nature and the human condition in the modern world?

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