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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. To whom is the praise directed in the tenth chorus of 'The Rock'?

2. To whom are the lines of the first of the "Five Finger Exercises" written?

3. Which of the following have not "become unsubstantial" in "Marina"?

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

5. What image is used as a metaphor in the second Landscape?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How do love and desire contrast with one another in "Burnt Norton"?

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

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

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

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

7. What is the "conscious art practiced with natural ease" of which Eliot writes in "To Walter de la Mare"?

8. What characterizes the tone of the poem in "Triumphal March"?

9. What is the tone of the five parts of the "Five-Finger Exercises" and how is this indicated?

10. Why should the innocent approach of the child to Christmas not be lost, according to "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees"?

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

Though a persistent if implicit consideration in all of Eliot's poetry, and explicit in all of the "Four Quartets", "The Dry Salvages" speaks of the "intersection of the timeless with time." Analyze and explicate this abstract and metaphysical statement in the context of either "The Dry Salvages" alone or of all of the "Four Quartets". What does it mean to say that time and the timeless intersect? What happens at such a point? What is to be found in time? What is to be found in the timeless? Who discerns this point? What does this indicate about the nature of humanity? How is this notion contextualized in the "Four Quartets"?

Essay Topic 3

His first major poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", is a commentary on the modern world and in particular on the modern man. Provide your own interpretation of this poem in an analytically interpretive essay. Who is Prufrock? What is Prufrock's status in society? What troubles the mind, thoughts, and desires of Prufrock? What characterizes Prufrock as a whole? How is Prufrock a symbol of modernity?

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This section contains 955 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample