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Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What did the wind break when it sprang up in The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?
2. Between what two things were the bells swinging in "The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?
3. The speaker asks if it is a dream or something else when the surface of a river looks like a what that "sweats with tears"?
4. Where, in Part II of "Four Quartets: East Coker", have the houses all gone?
5. With what did the old master met in Part II of "Four Quartets: Little Gidding" leave the poem's speaker?
Short Essay Questions
1. How is Part IV of "The Dry Salvages" different from the other four sections of the poem?
2. About what is the speaker confused in "The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?
3. How was the speaker awoken in "The wind sprang up at four o'clock"?
4. What is a possible interpretation of the use of the phrase "In my beginning is my end" and its inversion, "In my end is my beginning" at the beginning and end of "East Coker"?
5. What is meant in "Burnt Norton" by the phrase, "Only a flicker / Over the strained time-ridden faces / Distracted from distraction by distraction"?
6. Why should the innocent approach of the child to Christmas not be lost, according to "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees"?
7. What is the tone of the five parts of the "Five-Finger Exercises" and how is this indicated?
8. What is the significance of the final landscape, "Cape Ann"?
9. Where is the reader told to go and why in the third landscape, "Usk"?
10. Why does the speaker of "Lines for an Old Man" compare himself with a tiger?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
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?
Essay Topic 2
Few poems, if any, have had as profound an impact on the world of poetry and literature as "The Waste Land", and yet its interpretation remains a subject of great dispute. In your own critical analysis, provide an interpretation of this complex and multi-layered poem. What is the significance of the major images and characters in the poem? What is meant by the often obscure and cryptic language? What is the relationship of the five parts to one another? What is the significance of the frequent inclusion of water as a symbolic figure in the poem? What is the overall, coherent signification of the poem?
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?
This section contains 1,000 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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