View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. "Garlic and sapphires in the mud," described at the outset of Part II, clot what?
(a) The still point of the turning world.
(b) The artery of truth.
(c) The memory of inveterate scars.
(d) The bedded axle-tree.

2. To whose funeral(s) do they all, in "East Coker," Part III, go?
(a) The Director's.
(b) The petty contractors'.
(c) Nobody's.
(d) Their own.

3. The speaker states in the third part of "East Coker" that "In order to arrive at what you do not know / You must go by a way which is the way of" what?
(a) Ignorance.
(b) Wisdom.
(c) Elders.
(d) Principles.

4. The speaker states that a new world and the old are made what in Part II of "Burnt Norton"?
(a) Ecstatic.
(b) Spiritually imbued.
(c) Explicit.
(d) Implicit.

5. What does the speaker in Part I of "East Coker" state sleeps "in the empty silence"?
(a) The noonday sun.
(b) The sounds of summer.
(c) The dahlias.
(d) The early owls.

Short Answer Questions

1. By what is the "sultry light" absorbed in Part I of "East Coker"?

2. Into what world does the speaker mention descending in the third part of "Burnt Norton"?

3. Where was the "unheard music" hidden in Part I of "Burnt Norton"?

4. What is happening to "the hills and the trees, the distant panorama / And the bold imposing facade" in "East Coker"'s second part?

5. Interpretively, what is meant by "those long since under earth / Nourishing the corn"? in Part I of "East Coker"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is signified by the statement "Distracted from distraction by distraction" in "Burnt Norton"'s third part?

2. What is the purpose of the line, repeated and modified throughout the first part of "East Coker," "In my beginning is my end"?

3. What purpose is served by the string of paradoxical statements at the end of Part III of "East Coker"?

4. What is meant by "Only by the form, the pattern, / Can words or music reach / The stillness" in "Burnt Norton"'s fifth part?

5. What is signified by the phrase in Part III of "East Coker," "the growing terror of nothing to think about"?

6. What does the speaker mean in Part II of "Burnt Norton" when he states at the still point of the turning world, "there the dance is, / But neither arrest nor movement"?

7. What might be meant by the statement of the bird at the end of "Burnt Norton"'s first part, that "human kind / Cannot bear very much reality"?

8. What is the significance of the first 13 lines of "East Coker"?

9. What does the speaker mean by saying in Part V of "Burnt Norton" that love is caught "in the form of limitation"?

10. What is the significance of the dark, mentioned repeatedly at the beginning of Part III of "East Coker," into which "they" all go?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,014 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample