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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 what do multitudes weep, as reported in the final stanza of A Cooking Egg?

2. What, in the second stanza of "Whispers of Immortality" stares from the sockets of the eyes?

3. In the second part of the "Preludes", the speaker says that the morning comes to consciousness with faint smells of what?

4. Who spreads a pink and white checkered cloth over a rusty table in "Hysteria"?

5. What word aptly describes the dances that "Cousin Nancy" danced?

Short Essay Questions

1. What sort of life did the speaker of "Gerontion" live?

2. For what does Simeon hope in his encounter with the Christ child?

3. How does Mr. Apollinax contrast with his hosts?

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

5. What does the reception of the viaticum in "Animula" do for the soul?

6. What is meant in The Hippopotamus by stating that the "True Church remains below / Wrapt in the old miasmal mist"?

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

8. What is the significance of the "guardians of the faith" keeping watch upon the shelves in "Cousin Nancy"?

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

10. How has Simeon passed his life, as described in "A Song for Simeon"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A subtle and often misinterpreted poem, "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" features a complexity of thought on which the poem itself reflects. Examine this poem and provide an in-depth analysis of the poem's overall significance. What is the poem saying in its two individual halves? What is being said in each individual stanza? What is the meaning of the various images throughout the poem? How do they relate to one another? What is the overall literal significance of the poem? What does this overall literal significance indicate about the poem's deeper meaning? Most importantly, what is the significance of Sweeney in the poem?

Essay Topic 2

In "The Journey of the Magi", it is said that, with the entrance of Christ into the world, the "old dispensation" cannot satisfy any longer. Analyze the significance of this statement in the context of "The Journey of the Magi". Why are the magi no longer comfortable in their old dispensation? What has changed for them? How did it change? What did they experience in the Christ child? What is the significance of the relationship between Birth and Death as described in the poem's final stanza? What is the significance of the rest of the poem in relation to the final stanza?

Essay Topic 3

Frequently appearing in T.S. Eliot's poetry, explicitly in the later poems such as "Animula", "Choruses from 'The Rock'", and the "Four Quartets", and implicitly by its total lack in the earlier poems, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Hollow Men", is the theme of hope. Analyze the two ways in which this is a prominent topic for Eliot, drawing upon several poems as sources. What is the nature of hope? In what ways is hope lost or absent? What contributes to the loss of hope? Contrariwise, in what is hope to be found? How is hope to be had? What contributes to the possession of hope? What does hope do for human persons?

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