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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. With what are the "tattered arras" woven in Part I of "East Coker"?
(a) A field-mouse.
(b) Disconsolate eyes.
(c) Luminescent thread.
(d) A silent motto.

2. In what way does the world move, according to the final three lines of Part II of "Burnt Norton"?
(a) Frivolity.
(b) Appetency.
(c) Fidelity.
(d) Obstinacy.

3. Into what did the characters of "Burnt Norton"'s first part look towards the end?
(a) Their souls.
(b) The sky.
(c) A mirror.
(d) A pool.

4. Across what does the light fall, mentioned by the speaker in Part I of "East Coker" after the second time he utters the phrase "In my beginning is my end"?
(a) The gray stones.
(b) The village street.
(c) The deep lane.
(d) The open field.

5. Into what world does the speaker mention descending in the third part of "Burnt Norton"?
(a) The world of ineffable sound.
(b) The world without man.
(c) The world of perpetual solitude.
(d) The world of lachrymose souls.

Short Answer Questions

1. What must there not be in the way wherein one goes in order to get "there," according to the speaker of Part III of "East Coker"?

2. With what does the "periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion" leave one to wrestle, as stated in the second part of "East Coker"'?

3. "Garlic and sapphires in the mud," described at the outset of Part II, clot what?

4. What is desiccated when the speaker descends into a different world in the latter lines of "Burnt Norton," Part III?

5. The final line of Part III of "East Coker" claims that "where you are is" what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is an interpretative possibility for the scene the speaker describes in the open field in the first part of "East Coker"?

2. What is an interpretative possibility for the final four lines of the first part of "East Coker"?

3. Why does the speaker of "East Coker" want only to hear of the folly of old men, in Part II of "East Coker"?

4. How is the "here" of Part III of "Burnt Norton" described, and what is significant about this description?

5. What is meant in "Burnt Norton"'s first part by "What might have been... a world of speculation," lines 6-8?

6. Why does the speaker find "only a limited value / In the knowledge derived from experience" in Part II of "East Coker"?

7. What is the significance of the statement in the fifth part of "Burnt Norton," "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break... Will not stay still"?

8. What are the other echoes which inhabit the rose-garden in Part I of "Burnt Norton"?

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

10. What does the speaker mean when he states in Part V of "East Coker" that "there is no competition - / There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again"?

(see the answer keys)

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