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

2. What do people enjoy about marches like the one described in the "Triumphal March"?

3. What object is the speaker of "Marina" considering when he states that the object is "less clear and clearer"?

4. Who, in the eighth chorus of 'The Rock,' is said to have spoken of the shame of Jerusalem?

5. Who is said to be unpleasantly met in the fifth of the "Five Finger Exercises"?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What are the women doing with the card game in the "Fragment of a Prologue"?

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

4. What does it mean to be "redeemed from fire by fire" as stated in the fourth part of "Little Gidding"?

5. Where is the reader told to go and why in the third landscape, "Usk"?

6. What does the speaker mean by saying that "Our only health is the disease" in Part IV of "East Coker"?

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

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

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

10. What does Sweeney primarily describe in the "Fragment of an Agon"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

As one of Eliot's more controversial poems, "The Hippopotamus" is a commentary on religious belief and religious practice. Analyze and provide your own interpretation of this poem. What is the overall meaning of the poem? What are the individual parts which indicate this meaning? For what does the Hippopotamus within the poem stand? What is significant about the Hippopotamus' analogous portrayal? What is significant about the Church being referred to as the "True Church"? What is meant by the "old miasmal mist"?

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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