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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. How many weeks leave a year does "Arthur Edward Cyril Parker" receive from his job as a telephone operator in "Difficulties of a Statesman"?

2. Apprehension of the point of intersection of the timeless with time is the occupation of whom, according to Part V of "Four Quartets: The Dry Salvages"?

3. What is the reader implored not to hope to find behind the white well in the third Landscape?

4. The speaker of "Four Quartets: The Dry Salvages" wonders if whom meant that "the future is a faded song" in Part III?

5. What does the speaker of "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees" say should not be forgotten in later experience?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Why do the "cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries," spoken of in the first chorus from 'The Rock,' bring man further away from God and closer to dust?

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

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

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

6. About what is the speaker confused in "The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?

7. How is Part IV of "The Dry Salvages" different from the other four sections of the poem?

8. What is a possible interpretation of the significance of the "Midwinter spring" described in Part I of "Little Gidding"?

9. What is implied by the repetition of the phrase "meaning / Death," in reference to the various stages of life's enjoyment in "Marina"?

10. What is meant in "Burnt Norton" by the phrase, "Only a flicker / Over the strained time-ridden faces / Distracted from distraction by distraction"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Prominent in Eliot's poetry is the temporal, ephemeral nature of the physical world. Analyze this theme in a critical essay. What is time? How is the world temporal? What is the effect of the passing nature of the world upon the human person? What does this reveal about the human person? What does the human person's involvement with time reveal about the nature of time?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Important to many of Eliot's poems are the devices of simile, metaphor, and analogy. Considering a wide selection of his poems, craft an analytical essay on these poetic devices. What are they? How do they aid in the creation of poetic imagery and poetic meaning? What are some specific instances of each? How do these specific instances aid the reader in both visualizing the poem's literal significance and its deeper meaning?

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