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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. Of whose "damp souls" is the speaker of "Morning at the Window" aware?

2. By what in "Whispers of Immortality" was Webster much possessed?

3. What does the hippopotamus do at night?

4. Behind what does the "small soul" of "Animula" curl up?

5. What country has Mr. Apollinax visited according to the poem of the same name?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is meant at the end of the "Journey of the Magi" by the magi saying that they found death when they encountered the Christ child?

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

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

4. Why is Sweeney uncomfortable in "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"?

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

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

7. What does the "Boston Evening Transcript" seem to symbolize in the poem of the same name?

8. For what is the speaker yearning in "La Figlia che Piange", and what indicates this?

9. What characterizes the speech of the stuffed men in "The Hollow Men"?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

As T.S. Eliot's character of the "everyman," Sweeney appears in a number of poems and in one of the fragments of the unfinished poem, the "Sweeney Agonistes". Analyze the character of Sweeney as he appears in at least one of Eliot's works, giving an overall portrayal of the character through specific instances. What are his principal traits? What does he lack as a person? In what sort of actions does he engage? How is he representative of modern man? Who and what are used as contrasts to Sweeney as a person and Sweeney's patterns of behavior?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

One of his most prominent poems, "Ash-Wednesday" describes the process of a man's conversion to a Catholic (albeit Anglo-Catholic) faith. Analyze the portrayal of a non-Catholic life against a Catholic life, as put forth in "Ash-Wednesday". What are the characteristics of a non-Catholic life? In what sort of action and substance does such a life consist? Alternatively, what is found in the Catholic life? What is unique to the Catholic life? What are the images Eliot uses to draw these distinctions? How are these images somewhat ambiguous, and wherein, and how, does one make them distinct individually and coherent as a whole?

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